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SEYMOUR  DURST 


■i  '  -Fort  ni*4iv  ^rn/f^rj^      Je  Uanh^tan^ 


1 

FORT   NEW  AMSTERDAAl 


(NEW  YORK)  ,     J 651. 


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Because  it  has  been  said 
"£ver  thin0  comes  f  him  who  waits 

except  a  loaned  book." 


AVERY  ARCHITECTURAL  AND  F,NE  ARTS  LIBRARY 
GiPT  OF  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


METROPOLITAN  SIREN. 


MYSTERIES 
OF  -t-  NEW  4-  YORK 


A  SEQUEL  TO 

•GLIMPSES  OF   GOTHAM,"   AND    '*  NEW  YORK  BY 
DAY  AND  NIOHT." 


WITH    23  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PUBLISHED  BY 

BICHABD  K.  FOX,  PBOPRIETOE  POLICE  GASETTS, 

NEW  YORK. 


-  r/5 


1 

1 

Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1882  by 
KICHAED  K  FOX, 
Publisher  of  the  Police  Gazette, 

NEW  YORK, 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 

CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER   I.— METROPOLITAN    SHAMS,          -  -  8 

II.— NEW   YORK'S    NIGHT    HAWKS,   -  -  14 

III.  — BELLES    OF    THE    KITCHEN,  .  25 

IV.  — CURIOUS    METROPOLITAN   INDUSTRIES,  30 
Y._THE    MOONLIGHT    PIC-NIC,         -  -  40 

-  ,  VI.— PHOTOGRAPHIC    BEAUTIES,     -  -  U 

"    YIL— METROPOLITAN    MOONSHINERS,  -  51 

"  Vni— PETTY   FRAUDS    OF   NEW   YORK,  -  55 

^*     IX.— THE   FLASH   MINISTER,      -         •  -  65 

X.— THE   BEGGAR'S   REVEL,           •  .  68 


I 


PREFACE. 


There  are,  at  least,  three  works  in  the  romantic  literature  of  th© 
present  century  which  bear  a  somewhat  similar  title  to  this  one : 
"  The  Mysteries  of  Paris,"  by  Eugene  Sue ;  "  The  Mysteries  of  Lon- 
don," by  G.  W.  M.  Eeynolds,  and  the  "  Mysteries  of  the  Quaker  City," 
by  George  Lippard.  Each  of  these  is  a  strong  story,  replete  with  ro^ 
mantic  and  sensational  interest,  bristling  with  stirring  scenes  and 
powerful  word  pictures.    Yet  to-day  they  are  forgotten. 

Why  is  this  ? 

It  is  because  they  are,  after  all,  but  romances,  and  the  popular 
taste  for  fiction  changes,  shouldering  the  best  of  old  favorites  into  the 
comer  in  favor  of  far  less  meritorious  novelties  whose  charm  of  new- 
ness atones  for  their  shortcomings.  The  scenes  these  supplanted  vet- 
erans describe  belong  to  the  past.  The  present  generation  recognizes 
no  resemblance  between  them  and  the  life  that  goes  on  about  it.  They 
lack  fact  enough  to  become  history,  and  their  romance  is  faded,  dim 
and  dull  to  a  people  which  has  outgrown  the  surroundings  in  which 
that  romance  was  placed. 

But  with  our  "  Mysteries  of  New  York "  it  is  a  vastly  different 
^se. 

The  scenes  we  depict  are  being  enacted  about  us  every  day,  for 
we  write  of  the  great  metropolis  of  the  present,  of  the  third  greatest 
city  in  the  world  as  it  is  in  the  year  of  grace  1881.  It  is  the  real  life 
of  this  tremendous  gathering  of  men,  this  treasure-house  of  wealth  and 
asylum  of  poverty,  this  abode  of  virtue  and  haunt  of  crime,  which  we 
portray  with  pen  and  pencil.  It  is  its  ins  and  outs,  bright  scenes  and 
sombre  mysteries  which  artist  and  author  combine  to  give  an  endup* 
ing  place  in  literature. 

No  romance  here  but  that  of  fact,  which  has  truly  been  said  to 
be  more  startling  than  any  fiction  ;  which  fascinates  as  no  production 
of  the  novelist's  fancy  can,  because  we  know  it  to  be  true,  and  which 
we  remember  long  after  the  creations  of  genius,  the  fanciful  children 
of  the  most  brilliant  inventions,  are  forgotten. 

In  two  previous  works,  "  Glimpses  of  Gotham  *'  and  "  New  York 


8 


MYSTERIES  OF  NEW  YORK. 


by  Day  and  Night,"  we  have  commenced  a  panorama  of  life  in  the  great 
city  which  we  hope  to  continue,  still  further  cementing  between  our- 
selves and  our  readers  a  bond  of  amity  which  will  be  as  pleasing  to 
us  as  we  hope  to  make  it  delightful  to  them.  There  is  no  lack  of 
subjects.  They  surround  us  on  every  hand,  each  vyin^  with  the  other 
and  all  claiming  the  justice  of  equal  attention.  When  we  have  ex- 
tended that  justice  to  them,  and  lay  our  pen  aside,  we  shall  have  given 
to  the  world  such  a  compendium  of  New  York  as  has  never  yet  been 
dreamed  of ;  such  a  record  of  existence  in  the  metropolis  of  the  west- 
ern continent  in  all  its  varied  phases,  such  an  unveiling  of  its  mys- 
teries and  exposition  of  its  vices,  virtues,  good  points  and  evil  prac- 
tices, as  will  leave  the  world  no  excuse  for  saying  that  it  does  not 
know  Gotham. 

Under  our  guidance  the  straager  may  travel  New  York  from  end  , 
to  end,  unimperiled  by  the  dangers  which  the  newcomer  in  the  met- 
ropolis is  exposed  to.  Its  snares  or  pitfalls  can  have  no  peril  for  the 
stranger  who  recalls  our  warnings  of  them,  nor  need  any  of  its  pleas- 
ures be  beyond  his  reach.  The  same  mentor  who  warns  him  of  whai 
to  avoid  and  puts  him  on  his  guard  against  whatever  may  menace 
him,  points  the  way  also  to  the  brighter  s'de  of  city  life  and  tutors  him 
how  its  enjoyment  may  be  attained. 

The  elephant  in  the  menagerie  has  its  showman.  The  metropol- 
itan elephant  has  one,  too,  and  the  pages  of  our  books  are  the  pro- 
gramme of  the  gifted  beast's  performances.  As  the  man  at  the  circus 
would  say,  these  performances  must  be  seen  to  be  appreciated.  We 
may  add,  however,  that  they  will  be  all  the  better  appreciated  if 
their  nature  is  understood  beforehand,  and  that  no  small  number  of 
them  will  not  be  appreciated  at  all  unless  we  have  been  permitted 
to  point  them  out  and  tell  how  they  may  be  reached. 


CHAPTEK  I. 

METROPOLITAN  SHAMS. 

False  prosperity  has  always  been  one  of  New  York's  besetting 
SIM.  It  makes  no  difference  whether  there  is  a  '*  boom*'  or  a  "  crash  "* 
down  town,  some  one  always  has  money  and  the  sparkle  and  veneer 
np-town  doesn't  seem  to  grow  dim.  The  stranger  passing  through  our 
nates  and  looking  around  a  bit,  which  operation  generally  includes  tak- 


A  NIGHT  HAWK'S  EXPERIENCES.HP.  15.) 


9 


ing  lottery-ticket  strolls  with  conJ&dence  men,  hears  the  same  bustle, 
gets  fined  the  usual  amount  for  getting  drunk,  notices  as  many  dia- 
monds at  the  play  and  as  many  nobby  establishmentL  >u,shing  through 
the  park,  and  after  pondering  upon  it  for  a  while  comes  to  the  conclu- 
sioe  that  Gum  Creek,  W.  Va.,  and  the  rest  of  the  world  may  be  going 
to  the  devil,  but  Gotham  is  solid. 

Not  necessarily  so.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  theatrical  arrange- 
ment about  this  city  and  so  delicate  a  way  of  making  the  best  show 
possible,  of  utilizing  shams  so  deftly  that  they  deceive  the  most  ex- 
pert, that  her  reputation  for  dash,  "  go,"  and  brilliance  seems  never  to 
suffer,  no  matter  how  deep  the  gloom  elsewhere. 

The  town  is  really  a  diamond,  half  first  water,  half  paste.  It  is 
radiant  all  the  time,  and  old  a  resident  as  I  am  I  can  never  tell  whether 
I  am  living  in  an  atmosphere  of  opulence  or  prostration. 

My  only  financial  barometer  is  my  landlady, 

And  judging  from  her  appearance  this  morning  as  she  poured  the 
second  cup  of  coffee  for  me  I  guess  it  will  be  pretty  heavy  weather  up 
around  that  way  shortly. 

I  was  foolish  enough  to  bet  $20  that  I  could  do  that  "  15  "  puzzle 
in  three  hours. 

I  couldn't  do  it  in  three  years. 

So  I  told  her  that,  owing  to  my  contribution  to  the  famine  fund— - 
and  I  am  j^roud  to  say  in  all  seriousness  that  I  did  what  I  could  to 
further  one  of  the  noblest  movements  of  this  or  any  other  ^gc — and  an 
unfortunate  speculation  in  sea  cotton,  it  was  very  lo^t  tide  with  me 
and  she  would  have  to  go  over  for  some  time  along  with  a  pair  of 
boots  nnd  some  other  unfinished  business. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  shams. 

In  Philadelphia  they  do  not  have  them.  Everything  in  that 
pleasant  city  is  genuine.  Its  business  mea.  make  no  pretensions.  They 
do  not  sell  goods,  a  sample  in  one  hand  and  a  brandy  cocktail  in  the 
other,  and  as  a  rule  down  on  their  Third  street,  which  corresponds  to 
Wall,  their  speculation  is  as  conservative  as  a  flutter  in  cemetery  stocks, 
which,  indeed,  not  infreqently  takes  place. 

They  go  home  in  the  street  car,  and  it  is  home.  The  whole 
house.  You  are  invited  to  supper  and  as  you  consume  it  you  perceive 
the  same  substantiality  about  the  house. 

No  young  men  come  bawling  into  the  parlor  just  as  you  are  going 


10 


IfYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


to  bed,  smelling  of  brandy  and  tobacco  and  just  from  a  concert  saloon, 
where  the  plays  have  been  indecent  and  the  songs  ribald. 

How  is  it  in  Boston  ?  Again  no  shams.  That  "Common"  is  cer- 
tainly genuine.  If  you  should  intimate  in  any  manner  that  that  Com- 
mon was  not  everything  that  has  been  claimed  for  it — and  there  are 
very  few  romantic  reminiscences  left  unclaimed — ^Boston  would  rise  in 
its  might  and  hang  you  higher  than  the  spire  of  Faneuil  Hall. 

The  Boston  baked  bean,  is  he  solid?  Bather.  No  sham  here  any 
more  than  there  is  in  Wendell  Phillips  or  Balph  Waldo  Emerson,  or 
those  young  ladies  who  m  the  pleasant  afternoons  promenade  Wash- 
ington street  with  Greek  grammars  in  their  grasp.  When  they  marry 
they  make  no  sham  wives,  but  settle  right  down  to  science  and  do- 
mesticity. They  rock  the  cradle  and  read  Herbert  Spencer,  and  if 
the  prim  young  husband  dares  to  come  home  without  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  on  the  day  of  its  publication  he  has  his  Mercantile  Library 
ticket  taken  away  from  him  and  no  brown  bread  goes  with  his  Sunday 
morning  dish  of  baked  beans  for  three  weeks. 

You  who  are  not  Bostonians  have  no  idea  of  the  torture  this  im- 
plies. 

But  we  will  xake  a  Sound  boat  and  return  to  Gotham,  into  whose 
superficial  and  unreal  features  of  get-along-ative-ness  I  shall  now 
plunge  without  more  ado. 

Did  you  know,  gentle  reader,  that  there  are  business  men  in  New 
York  who  hire  wedding  presents  ?  Fact.  It  is  also  a  fact  that  on  the 
other  hand  there  are  men  in  New  York  who  buy  wedding  presents 
from  families  who  are  only  too  anxious  to  realize. 

What  is  sentiment  and  romance  now  ?  Not  much.  Not  much  in 
New  York  anyhow.  You  may  find  genuine  love  and  Tupperism  among^ 
the  hay  ricks  and  daisies  of  the  country,  but  we  have  no  time  for  it  in 
Gotham.  We  want  money.  So  the  gifts  of  uncles,  aunts,  grandmoth- 
ers, etc.,  (no  Pinafore,  you  see)  are  swept  into  a  bap  while  the  bride 
i  tacks  the  bank  check  away  in  her  purse. 

Now  for  the  other  matrimonial  scene.  The  father  of  the  family  is 
informed  that  young  Jones  has  at  last  asked  Felicia  to  make  him  a 
happy  man  and  Felicia  has  answered  in  cooing  terms  that  she  would 
try  real  hard  to  do  so.  It  is  desirable  that  this  match  should  take 
plack.  Felicia  is  not  a  bad-looking  girl  and  everything  depends  upon 
her.    They  played  her  five  seasons  at  Saratoga,  but  she  never  scored 


11 


a  **  trick."  The  nearest  approach  was  her  acceptance  of  the  hand  of 
a  Silesian  count. 

She  would  have  been  a  countess  in  a  day  or  two,  only  an  Illinois 
detective  came  along  and  took  the  count  back  to  Alton  where  he  has 
five  years  yet  to  work  out  for  seeing  how  near  he  could  imitate  another 
man's  handwriting. 

Ih  was  a  good  imitation  and  really  deceived  the  teller  uf  the 
bank. 

As  a  general  rule  these  dukes,  counts  and  members  of  her  majes- 
ty's Pink  Dragoons,  whom  you  run  across  at  Saratoga,  are  well  up  in 
penmanship,  an  accomplishment  which  they  draw  upon  when  they  get 
well  down  in  the  world. 

Felicia  having  failed  again,  the  family  of  Thompsons,  pere,  mere, 
Felicia,  and  Caroline  returned  to  New  York. 

"  See  here,"  said  the  old  man,  who  is  in  the  pickle  business  in 
Whitehall  street,  "  this  won't  do,  Mrs.  Thompson,  pickles  are  going  to 
the  devil,  and  Felicia  has  again  cost  me  five  thousand  dollars.  You 
would  take  this  infernally  expensive  house ;  you  would  give  a  party 
that  you  owe  for  yet ;  heaven  only  knows  how  much  you  owe  about 
here.  I  only  know  that  I  have  to  take  the  stage  two  blocks  further  up 
the  street  than  usual  in  order  to  avoid  the  butcher  who  is  always  at 
the  door  looking  for  me,  with  a  handful  of  mutton  chops  in  one  hand 
and  a  cleaver  in  another — and  Felicia  not  married  yet." 

Of  course  this  is  not  said  before  the  young  lady. 

Gloom  rests  upon  that  mansion  until  young  Jones  commits  him- 
self. Then  the  old  man  smiles  a  grim  smile,  and  when  he  is  assured 
that  Jones  has  the  article  that  would  soothe  even  a  butcher,  and  has 
it  in  profusion,  he  goes  right  off  and  buys  a  volume  on  "  Breach  of 
Promise  "  cases,  which  he  consumes  down  at  the  office  after  the  green 
and  lean  office  boy,  who  devours  forty  pickles  a  day,  has  gone  home. 

*'If  Jones  fools  Felicia,"  this  modern  stern  "parient"  says,  "he 
won't  fool  me.  I  have  notes  out  that  must  be  taken  up,  or  Pll  be  in 
Red  Leary's  cell  in  Ludlow  street  jail." 

But  Jones  has  no  idea  of  fooling  any  one.  He  is  really  in  love 
with  Felicia,  who  reminds  him  of  a  statue  he  saw  in  Greece.  Or  was 
it  in  E-ome  ?    He  can't  think.    It  doesn't  matter. 

He  brings  her  caramels,  and  they  look  through  the  stereoscope  to- 
gether. Mr.  Thompson  sells  his  "  Breach  of  Promise  Cases  "  to  a  curb* 


12 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


stone  bazar  in  Nassau  street,  and  buys  his  gloves  for  the  wedding  with 
the  proceeds. 

That's  all  very  well,  but  how  about  the  wedding  presents  ?  As  a 
general  rule.  Job's  turkey  was  an  Astor  or  a  Yanderbilt  compared  with 
the  family  of  the  Thompsons.  They  were  all  country  people,  too  ;  that 
offensive  kind  with  big  red  hands  and  Timothy  seed  in  their  hair  who 
send  you  up  a  barrel  of  sheep-nose  apples  and  a  bag  of  walnuts,  and 
then  want  to  come  to  town  and  board  it  out,  and  have  you  take  them 
to  the  theatre.  To  commence  with,  Felicia  would  die  rather  than  have 
any  of  them  at  the  ceremony. 

A  little  investigation  fixed  it  all,  and  when  the  evening  came  there 
was  a  long  table  in  the  parlor,  one  glittering  mass  of  silver  testimonials, 
all  ticketed,  like  dogs  at  a  bench  show. 

In  the  kitchen  sat  a  rough-looking  3hap  whose  business  it  was  to 
keep  an  eye  on  the  soup  tureens^  the  gold-lined  butter  dishes,  the  ex- 
quisite tea-sets  and  all  the  rest  of  tho  collection. 

The  wedding  was  a  very  fine  affair.  The  old  man,  knowing  it  was 
the  last  occasion,  still  further  depleted  his  emaciated  bank  account  and 
drew  for  all  that  was  needful. 

Felicia  had  to  confess  all  to  Jones,  of  course.  But  as  Felicia  pos- 
sessed the  "bossy"  qualities,  and  her  husband  was  constructed  on  the 
hlanc  mange  order  of  architecture,  there  wasn't  much  trouble. 

Presumably  Felicia  went  on  a  wedding  tour,  and  that  brings  us  to 
a  new  phase  of  metropolitan  "  shams."  I  don't  mean  to  intimate  that 
you  can  hire  a  trousseau  in  Nev:  York,  nor  indeed  do  I  think  there 
lives  and  breathes  any  bride  who  would  be  willing  to  start  her  matri- 
monial career  in  that  manner  ;  but  I  boldly  assert,  and  can  demon- 
strate it  at  the  expense  of  any  doubter  who  will  send  me  up  to  Sara- 
toga for  that  purpose,  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the  startling 
costume  changes  assumed  by  the  young  ladies  are  rendered  possible 
by  the  hire  system  introduced  into  New  York  by  Parisian  tnodistes  and 
worked  so  charmingly  to  their  financial  advantage. 

The  genuine  aristocratic  world  are  responsible  for  this  practice  of 
hiring  trunk  load  after  trunk  load  of  the  most  elaborate  costumes. 
They  wear  dazzling  raiment,  made  by  Worth,  and  paid  for  by  millionaire 
papas.  How,  then,  are  girls  of  the  Felicia  class  going  to  keep  their  end 
up  if  a  kind  Providence  had  not  thrown  the  boulevard  milliners  in  their 
iray  ?    If  you  want  to  go  to  Saratoga  to  catch  a  husband  whose  duty 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


13 


it  shall  be  to  buy  dresses  you  must  nevertheless  have  these  dresses  in 
which  to  glitter  and  shine  while  catching  him.  If  you  can't  own  a  dress 
the  next  best  thing  is  to  hire  one. 

I  know  a  proud  young  man,  rather  impecunious,  it  is  true,  who 
keeps  a  valet ;  and  they  get  }<long  very  well  with  one  dress-coat  be- 
tween them.  My  friend  always  dines  in  a  gorgeous  silken  jacket  when 
he  has  invited  anyone  home,  and  the  valet  waits  in  the  dress-coat. 
After  dinner  host  and  guest  go  to  the  opera,  my  friend  in  full  dress. 
But  it's  the  same  coat. 

When  an  impressario  takes  the  trouble  to  go  to  Europe  and  en- 
gage at  an  enormous  figure  a  dramatic  or  lyric  artist,  he  makes  up  his 
mind  at  once  that  if  there  isn't  a  dollar  in  New  York  that  artist  never- 
theless shall  create  an  immense  furore  on  her  or  his  arrival. 

After  all  the  usual  newspaper  squib  business  has  been  attended  to, 
the  thing  is  to  get  a  part  of  the  excited  populace  on  the  wharf  to  meet 
the  steamer.  Say  it  is  an  opera  bouffe  soprano.  All  you  have  to  do  is 
to  go  to  Union  Square  and  pick  out  the  young  men  who  loaf  about 
there  earning  a  more  or  less  precarious  existence  by  pretending  to  be 
interested  in  music  or  the  drama.  They  are  shows,  too,  but  how  they 
manage  it  is  another  metropolitan  mystery  which  I  shall  take  time  to 
probe  one  of  these  days. 

You  explain  your  plan  to  these  elegants.  They  are  to  have  a  ticket 
for  the  first  night,  a  pair  of  gloves,  and  an  invite  to  a  little  spread,  if 
they  in  their  turn  will  scare  up  a  dress-suit  somehow  and  be  on  the 
wharf  when  the  steamer  arrives  to  throw  boquets  and  howl.  They  ac- 
cept, of  course.    What  is  the  consequence  ? 

The  -poov  prima,  maid  and  lap-dog  look  over  the  rail  and  see  all 
New  York  in  an  uproar.  The  impressario  went  down  the  Bay  on  a 
tug.  He  points  out  one  of  Delmonico's  waiters  as  the  mayor  of  the 
city,  and  a  piano  tuner  does  duty  for  the  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher. 

She  already  sees  herself  returning  to  France,  loaded  down  with 
diamonds.    The  press  is  so  great  she  can  scarcely  reach  her  carriage. 

All  sham  !    All  "xx  extra  sham !" 

The  show  doesn't  go ;  in  two  weeks  she  is  sparring  for  her 
manager,  who  has  gone  to  Bocaester  to  run  a  female  walking  match. 

In  another  fortnight  Mile.  Tympana  is  living  in  a  South  Fifth 
avenue  boarding-house  where  it  always  smells  of  garlic,  waiting  for  an 
engagement. 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


The  most  expensive  and  useless  sham  that  I  know  of  is  forcing  a 
poor  play  a  hundred  nights  in  New  York  city,  so  that  it  can  go  on  the 
road  with  that  record. 

Night  after  night  there  isn't  the  gas-bill  in  the  house,  and  yet  the 
manager  will  sit  up  in  his  little  den,  writing  advertisements  for  the 
next  day's  papers,  in  which  people  are  represented  as  behaving  like 
Zulus  in  their  struggles  to  get  to  the  box-office. 

This  done  he  goes  across  the  street  to  the  beer  saloon  to  get  a 
••schooner"  on  credit,  and  to  borrow  the  price  of  an  American  District 
Telegraph  boy. 

The  place  where  Gotham's  shams  are  to  be  seen  in  rich  pro- 
fession is  naturally  enough  Wall  street.  I  used  to  be  a  great  habitue 
of  that  enchanting  region,  and  have  left  more  there  than  I  ever  ex- 
pect to  own  again,  unless  it  should  be  my  happy  lot  to  fall  in  with 
Stewart's  body  late  some  night  when  I  am  going  home. 

But  the  quarter  has  a  great  fascination  for  me,  especially  since 
they  have  opened  a  mining  exchange.    There  are  the  shares  to  watch, 
and  it  isn't  a  bad  idea  to  keep  a  strict  lookout  when  dealing  with 
the  astute  gentlemen  who  represent  this  and  that  Bonanza  stock. 
Talk  about  the  "shams"  and  swindling  of  the  oil  furore. 
Since  the  Arabian  Night  stories  of  Flood  and  O'Brien   the  air 
from  San  Francisco  to  Sandy  Hook  has  been  crowded  with  golden 
kites,  a  millionaire  at  the  end  of  each  string, 
And  yet- 
But  let  us  enjoy  the  dream. 


CHAPTEK  n. 

yrsvr  yoke  night-hawks. 

The  public  cabs  and  coaches  of  New  York  are  subject  to  a  yearly 
license  fee  of  three  dollars  and  five  dollars  respectively.  Last  year 
over  1,500  such  licenses  were  taken  out.  Of  this  number  about  one- 
eip^hth  of  the  vehicles  are  kept  on  night  service,  and  form  that  class 
of  public  conveyance  known  to  the  initiated  as  night-hawks.  By 
this  substitution  of  a  single  letter  the  difference  between  day  and 
night  hacks  is  defined  with  magnificent  expressiveness.    The  night- 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


IS 


hacks  are  real  birds  of  prey,  whose  beaks,  or  rather  doors,  are  ever 
agape  for  spoil. 

"  There  aint  no  use  talking,"  said  a  grizzled  old  night  hackman  to 
me,  over  a  3  a.  m.  tumber  ©f  gin  and  sugar ;  "  swindles  is  swindles, 
and  that's  the  name  to  give  it.  I'll  lay  my  hack  and  hosses  again  a 
five  cent  nickel  you  can't  find  no  wus  homswagglers  onto  the  streets 
*n  we  are.  But  what  kin  we  do  ?  People  lays  theirselves  out  for  it, 
and  when  a  man's  led  into  temptation  you  can't  blame  him  for  not 
being  delivered  from  evil  'Opportunity  makes  the  thief,'  as  the  old 
woman  said  when  the  cat  licked  the  pizened  milk  and  croaked." 

This  ingenuous  and  picturesque  admission  establishes  the  fact 
ifith  which  this  chapter  has  to  deal ;  that  the  night-hawks  of  New  York 
are  birds  the  average  citizen  had  best  beware  of. 

Nowadays  the  best  place  to  find  the  night  hacks  is  on  Sixth 
avenue  and  Twenty-seventh  street,  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  gilded 
show  places  for  tawdry  vice,  which  have  sprung  up  in  that  section  of 
late  years  like  mushrooms.  From  eleven  o'clock  imtil  day  begins  to 
dawn  they  line  the  avenue  and  the  cross  streets  to  the  westward  of  it, 
drawn  up  along  the  curb  as  one  sees  vehicles  waiting  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  the  Academy  of  Music  on  the  night  of  a  great  ball  On  the 
avenue  they  stick  to  the  western  curb,  that  side  of  the  street  being  pre- 
eminently the  busy  one,  waiting  for  spoil. 

And  as  a  general  thing  they  do  not  wait  in  vaiiL  The  drivers, 
when  not  moistening  in  some  convenient  hostelry,  loll  on  their  boxes 
and  lounge  on  the  sidewalk,  hailing  passers-by. 

A  stray  drunken  man  is  snapped  out  of  the  crowd  which  tramps 
along  until  after  midnight  in  an  unbroken  stream,  or  a  stranger  who 
has  wandered  out  of  his  depth  and  got  lost,  a  door  bangs,  a  hack 
rattles  off,  and  the  line  closes  up  to  fill  the  gap  left  by  this  defection. 

From  eleven  till  one  o'clock  this  casual  business  is  about  all  that 
is  done.  Then  the  dance-houses  begin  to  disgorge,  as  if  their  con- 
tents had  made  them  sick,  as  they  certainly  would  any  building  of  re- 
spectable attributes.  Flash  men  and  flashier  women,  inflamed  with 
drink,  reel  out  from  their  hot,  tainted  precincts,  and  stagger  as  the 
xjool  air  outside  blows  upon  them. 

"They don't  feel  their  lush  inside,"  said  a  hackman  of  an  ob- 
servant turn.  "  But  when  the  cold  air  strikes  'em,  drink  comes  all  to 
wonsi    Then  we  take  a  hand  in  the  game." 


16 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


The  best  business  of  the  Sixth  avenue  night-hawks  is  done  with 
freights  of  this  character.  It  lasts  from  one  o'clock  till  nearly  three. 
When  the  dance-house  lights  are  extinguished  and  their  audiences 
vanish,  the  hawks  prowl  off,  or  to  use  the  expression  of  the  craft, 
"goes  cruising." 

Next  to  Sixth  avenue,  Union  and  Madison  squares  are  the  chief 
stands  of  the  night-hawks,  though  they  may  be  found,  singly  or  in 
braces,  or  small  coveys,  at  the  various  ferries,  and  in  front  or  the  prin- 
cipal hotels.  They  remain  stationary  there  until  about  two  o'clock. 
Then  they  begin  to  cruise. 

The  principal  cruising  is  done  along  Broadway  from  the  Fifth 
Avenue  Hotel  to  Twenty-fourth  street,  and  on  Sixth  avenue  from 
Twenty-third  to  Thirty-fourth.  Some  years  ago,  when  the  great  faro 
and  keno  games  in  Houston  street  were  in  their  glory,  when  Greene 
and  Wooster  streets  were  palisaded  solidly  with  sinks  of  shame  too 
vile  to  name,  and  when  Houston  and  Bleecker  streets  were  thickly 
sown  with  flaring  dance-houses,  Broadway  from  the  Prescott  House  to 
Union  Square  was  a  gold  mine  to  the  night-hawks.  The  Bowery,  too,, 
from  Chatham  Square,  where  the  only  hack  stand  on  the  east  side 
is  now  located,  as  far  up  as  Grand  street,  was  a  rich  cruising 
ground.  But  only  a  couple  of  sleepy  hacks  now  hold  the  night  watch 
at  the  commencement  of  East  Broadway,  and  a  stray  cruiser  prowls 
Broadway,  below  Union  Square,  though  at  Clinton  place  a  couple  of 
hacks  can  usually  be  found  the  night  through. 

"  There  ain't  no  more  life  down  here  nor  there  is  in  a  biled  clam 
though,"  said  the  proprietor  of  one  of  these,  dolefully.  "There's 
only  one  bank  open  on  Broadway  below  Twelfth  street.  We  pick  a 
winner  up  from  there  now  and  then,  but  bless  your  boots,  if  it  wasn't 
for  the  lushes  we  might  as  well  chop  up  the  hacks  to  cook  the  bosses 
over,  for  we  wouldn't  git  nothin'  else  to  eat." 

Cruising  is  a  simple  process.  The  night-hawk  scents  its  prey 
from  afar,  as  it  jo^s  s  owly  along  the  quiet  street. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  couple,  strolling  and  talking  in  the  disjointed  sen- 
tences of  tired  men,  perhaps  a  drunkard,  ziz-zaging  to  his  neglected 
bed.  As  soon  as  his  eyes  light  on  them  the  driver  runs  up  beside 
them,  and  keeping  pace  with  them,  as  close  to  the  sidewalk  as  the  curb 
will  permit  his  wheels  to  come,  solicits  patronage,  by  calling  : 

**  Hack,  sir?    Don't  you  want  a  hack?  " 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


17 


Two  blocks  is  the  maximum  distance  a  night-hawk  will  pursue  his 
quarry.  If  he  does  not  capture  it  then,  he  treats  it  to  a  round  of  curs- 
ing and  drives  back  in  search  of  better  luck.  Sometimes  two  hawks 
pounce  on  the  same  victim.  Then  things  are  lively  till  one  of  them 
secures  him.  As  a  general  thing,  however,  the  hawks  do  not  interfere 
with  one  another. 

Drunken  men  are  the  night-hawks' chief  prey.  Winning  gamblers  also 
always  drive  home  after  a  fortunate  night  at  cards.  These  latter  are 
very  liberal,  as  men  who  make  money  after  their  fashion  commonly 
are. 

"  Many's  tho  fiver  I've  got  for  taking  a  winner  ten  blocks  in  the 
gray  of  the  morning,"  said  Red  Barney,  one  of  the  best  known  of  our 
night-hawks,  "and  they  never  think  of  offering  less  than  two.  Ah,, 
the  boys  isn't  such  a  bad  lot  after  all,  though  their  ways  is  queer." 

There  are  some  vciy  queer  phases  of  night-life  in  the  metropo- 
lis revealed  to  the  night-hawk^  is  may  be  supposed.  One  is  represent- 
ed by  a  Parisian  fashion  which  came  into  vogue  a  year  or  so  ago. 
this  is  the  fashion  of  driving  about  all  night.  A  man  will  get  so  drunk 
that  he  does  not  care  to  go  home  and  expose  himself.  Instead  of 
going  to  a  hotel  he  will  hire  a  hack  and  go  jogging  about  all  night,  and 
sleep  his  debauch  off  inside.  Ladies  of  easy  manners  frequently  re- 
sort to  the  same  sobering  process  after  a  wet  night  at  dancing  halls. 

Hackmen  hate  to  drive  women  about  alone.  They  say  they  are 
mean  payers  and  when  they  are  drunk  invariably  create  a  disturbance, 
break  windows  and  otherwise  interfere  with  the  internal  economy  of 
the  vehicle. 

Young  men  on  a  spree  frequently  hire  a  hack  and  insist  on  the 
driver  joining  them  in  their  debauch.  He  is  usually  willing  enough, 
for  your  night-hawk  is  a  thirsty  bird  with  what  Artemus  Ward  aptly 
termed  a  "  talent  for  drinking."  Some  very  curious  episodes  take 
their  rise  out  of  this.  A  couple  of  weeks  ago  some  laborers  going  to 
Work  at  daylight  found  a  hack  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  Bloom- 
ingdale  road  near  the  insane  asylum.  The  horses  were  asleep.  In- 
side were  the  driver  and  two  fares  in  a  similar  condition.  An  empty 
brandy  bottle  told  the  tale  as  plainly  as  words. 

A  literary  man  of  some  local  fame  was  arrested  for  fast  driving.  A 
policeman  found  him  tearing  down  Fifth  avenue  at  four  in  the  morn- 
ing on  the  box  of  a  public  cab.    The  driver  was  dead  drunk  inside. 


18 


MYSTERIES   OF  XEW  YORK. 


The  delinquent,  in  answer  to  the  judge,  said :  "  Well,  I  got  a  poor 
iellow  drunk  and  I  thought  it  was  only  fair  that  I  should  drive  him 
iome."    His  philanthropy  cost  him  $20. 

"When  I  had  mj  stand  at  the  Grand  Central  Hotel,"  said  the 
night-hawk  already  alluded  to  as  Ked  Barney,  "  I  had  a  very  curious 
customer.  He  was  an  old  Frenchman,  a  reglar  Jack-a'-dandy.  He 
lived  in  Bond  street,  and  I  alius  believed  on  a  income  he  got  from 
Jiome.  Once  a  month,  alius  between  the  first  and  fifth  and  sixth,  he 
^ould  turn  up  at  the  hotel  about  midnight,  dressed  up  to  the  nines, 
gloves  an'  all. 

"  He  would  drive  to  a  French  gambling  house  in  Bleecker  street 
— the  Cafe  de  la  Marine — stop  there  just  a  hour  then  go  down  to  the 
Battery,  stoppin'  at  a  French  place  in  North  Moore  street,  then  drink 
his  way  through  four  French  bars  on  the  Bowery,  wet  up  at  a  Italian 
liotel  on  Seventeenth  street  and  stop  another  hour  at  the  French 
madam's  restaurant. 

"Every  place  he  stopped  he  sent  a  drink  out  to  me.  At  the  mad- 
-am's  he  would  git  a  bottle  of  brandy  and  drive  straight  out  Fifth 
-avenue  until  day  broke,  when  I  had  to  take  him  home. 

"  Liquor  made  him  onsteady  and  he  used  to  look  like  a  corpse 
when  he  got  out,  with  his  black  wig  and  his  dyed  mustash,  and  his 
face  white  with  brandy.  He  paid  me  $10  a  trip  and  when  he  left  al- 
ways said  :  *  Good  fortune,  driver.'  The  boys  used  to  call  him  *  Red 
Barney's  Luck,'  and  I  believe  he  was,  too,  for  I  never  made  as  much 
money  as  I  did  then." 

Almost  as  queer  a  character  as  "  Bed  Barney's  Luck  "  was  a  char- 
acter Tom  Finn,  now  one  of  the  Sixth  avenue  brigade,  tells  about. 
Tom  was  driving  from  in  front  of  the  Astor  House  in  those  days  and 
had  one  of  the  neatest  coupes  in  the  city. 

One  night  a  gentleman  came  out  of  the  hotel  and  engaged  him. 
He  wore  an  ulster,  then  an  unknown  garment  here.  He  was  an  Eng- 
lishman and  had  a  list  of  places  on  a  slip  of  paper,  to  which  he  told 
Tom  to  drive  him.    They  were  all  gambling  and  up-town  houses. 

"He  kep  it  up  ivery  other  night  for  a  month  and  tin  days,"  said 
Tom,  "  thin  he  disappeared,  Wan  noight,  long  afterward,  I  was  drivin' 
down  Broadway  an'  I  passed  a  hack  comin'  up.  As  we  ginerally  does, 
I  hailed  him.  '  What  luck  ? '  says  I.  '  As  drunken  a  divil  as  ever  ye 
see,'  says  he.    And  whin  he  spoke  ye  might  'a  knocked  me  off  my 


J^IYSTEEIES   OF  NEW  YOBK. 


19 


seat  wid  a  broken  straw.  'Twas  me  ould  customer  of  the  Asthor  House 
He  was  driviu'  for  Kennedy  thin  and  now  lie's  coachman  to  a  family 
on  Fifth  avenue." 

The  reader  may  recall,  a  couple  of  years  ago,  the  old  Austrian 
lady  who  called  herself  the  Countess  Heinructh  and  who  actually  lived 
in  a  j)ublic  hack  for  a  couple  of  days  before  the  disgusted  driver  de- 
livered Ler  to  police  headquarters.  Her  case  is  more  than  paralleled 
by  the  fallowing  experience  of  a  Madison  Square  night-hackman  named 
Morris 

A  t  11  o'clock  one  night  a  hackman  hailed  Morris.  He  had  a  lady 
insi'le  whom  he  had  taken  from  a  Cunard  stoaLi'^r  that  afternoon.  She 
WIS  looking  for  some  friends  and,  as  he  had  to  go  back  to  the  stable, 
he  desired  to  transfer  her  to  Morris  to  continue  her  quest.  The  ar" 
rangement  was  assented  to. 

"And  a  gay  old  job  I  had,  I  can  tell  you,"  said  that  worthy.  "She 
was  a  fat,  good-looking  woman  of  about  forty  and  she  had  two  leather 
bags  with  her.  Well,  bust  my  bones,  if  I  didn't  drive  her  to  twenty- 
three  different  places.  At  last  it  got  so  late  that  I  was  afraid  to 
ring  the  bells  any  more  and  wanted  to  plant  her  at  a  hotel,  but  she 
wouldn't  plant.  Then  I  told  her  I  had  to  go  to  the  stable.  '  Take 
me  there,*  says  she,  *I  like  your  hack,  so  I  don't  mind  sleeping  in  it.' 
When  we  got  to  the  stable  she  gave  me  $5.  *  Call  me  at  eight,'  said 
she.  I  was  so  flabbergasted  I  couldn't  make  a  kick.  I  told  the  stable 
people  and  as  they  didn't  object  we  concluded  to  let  her  be.  We 
thought  she  was  crazy,  you  see. 

"  Well,  you  may  imagine  I  was  out  early  the  next  morning  to  see 
what  had  happened.  She  had  waked  up,  washed  herself  at  the  hy- 
drant and  got  some  breakfast  at  a  restaurant,  which  she  ate  in  the  hack. 
We  started  again  and  hunted  arc^nd  all  day.  No  use.  That  night 
she  slept  in  the  hack  again.  She  had  a  pile  of  money  and  paid  liber- 
ally, feeding  me  and  giving  me  drinks.  Besides,  she  was  quiet  and 
ladylike  all  along,  so  I  didn't  care  to  get  rid  of  her  roughly  and  she 
stuck  like  a  leech,  so  I  couldn't  j)ut  her  out  any  other  style.  The  af- 
ternoon of  the  second  day  we  found  a  party  that  knew  her  and  she  let 
me  go.  She  paid  me  altogether  $25  and  I've  seen  her  many  a  day  since 
driving  down  the  avenue  in  a  swell  private  turnout." 

It  is  difficult  to  get  at  the  earnings  of  a  night-hawk,  dependent  as 
they  are  on  luck  and  his  own  nerve.      They  have  a  regular  scale  of 


so 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


prices,  adjusted  by  the  license  office,  but  they  never  adhere  to  them 
and  few  of  their  casual  customers  know  enough  to  compel  them  to. 
Each  public  conveyance  is  required  to  carry  a  printed  card  defining 
the  rates  of  fare  the  driver  is  permitted  to  ask,  but  this  is  usually  hid 
away  so  cunningly  as  to  be  undiscoverable. 

Then,  if  a  fare  is  drunk  or  green  enough,  the  night-hawk  win  drive 
him  around  till  a  ride  of  a  few  blocks  will  be  prolonged  into  miles. 

Overcharges,  if  reported  at  the  License  Office  in  the  City  Hall, 
cost  the  offending  hackman  his  license,  but  such  complaints  are 
rare. 

The  reason  is  a  simple  one.  People  who  know  enough  to  report 
a  hackman  also  know  enough  not  to  have  any  occasion  for  a  report. 
The  wisest  plan  of  procedure  with  a  night-hawk  is  to  arrange  terms 
with  him  beforehand. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  terms  are  not  arranged  beforehand  and 
an  overcharge  is  made,  a  little  game  of  verbal  bluff  never  fails  to  bring 
it  within  limit. 

"  We  don't  daro  be  pulled  up  for  overcharging,'*  remarked  a  cab- 
man. "  Of  course  we  all  try  to  get  as  much  as  we  can.  If  you  think 
it's  too  much  and  refuse  to  pay  we  can  only  call  a  copper  and  give 
you  in  charge.  We  don't  care  to  do  that,  so  we  come  down  to  the 
limit.  Every  city  man  that  knows  anything  bulls  us  down  now  and  a 
$3  dollar  fare  from  a  man  about  town  is  a  big  one.  Yet  fifteen  years 
ago  we  wouldn't  look  at  less  than  t':at  amount  for  a  short  drive,  and 
thought  nothing  of  making  fifty  dollars  a  night  and  even  more." 

"How  much  do  you  aveiage  a  night?" 

"If  I  work  an  average  oi  six  dollars  a  night  I'm  lucky  now  and  Jt 
own  my  own  turnou':.  Many's  the  night  I  don't  pickup  a  penny.  About 
half  the  night  hacks  belong  to  the  drivers.  The  others  are  stable 
hacks  like  most  of  the  day  ones,  and  the  driver  has  to  turn  in  so  much 
a  night  to  the  owner  and  keep  what  is  over.  At  these  rates  you  can't 
much  blame  us  for  trying  t3  make  all  wo  can." 

Another  source  of  revenue  i.  the  night-hawk  is  the  houses  of  ill- 
fame,  which  pay  him  a  percentage  on  all  the  customers  he  brings  to 
them. 

A  great  source  of  complaint  against  the  night-hawks  used  to  be 
the  robberies  committed  in  them.  Drivers  in  the  old  days  were  arrant 
rascals — bandits  of  the  box,  whose  hands  were  against  every  pnrse. 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


21 


The  license  law  was  very  lax  and  it  was  next  to  impossible  to  bring- 
a  theft  home  to  the  robber,  since  his  victim  was  usually  beyond  the 
power  of  swearing  to  anything  and  he  knew  his  trade  well  enough  not 
to  have  any  other  witnesses. 

But  every  now  and  then  one  would  be  caught  in  the  act  and  sent 
on  a  journey  to  the  granite  mansion  with  a  melodious  name. 

A  vigorous  administration  of  the  license  law  did  much  to  put  a 
stop  to  it,  too,  for  now  every  cab  is  registered  and  the  police  can  lay 
their  hands  on  a  driver  almost  as  soon  as  a  complaint  is  made.  Con- 
sequently actual  robberies  in  hacks  are  rare. 

But  losses  are  still  common  enough  and  will  be  as  long  as  people 
who  patronize  night  hacks  have  anything  to  lose. 

By  law,  all  articles  found  in  hacks  are  to  be  turned  over  to  prop- 
erty clerk  St.  John  at  police  headquarters,by  whom  they  are  advertised 
in  the  City  Record.  Such  as  he  receives,  however,  are  of  little  value. 
Money  wnich  escapes  the  careless  hands  of  drunken  men  and  jewelry 
rarely  find  their  way  to  him,  if  they  ever  do. 

Most  of  the  night  hackmen  acknowledge  to  having,  from  time  to 
time,  picked  up  articles  of  value  in  their  vehicles.  One  once  found 
$1,800  in  bank  notes.  Another  gleaned  a  diamond  brooch  worth  nearly 
as  much. 

Most  of  the  money  found  is,  however,  in  crumpled  lumps  and  in 
small  sums.  The  jewelry  consists  of  pins  and  rings,  with  very  rarely 
a  watch. 

"  The  curiouest  find  I  ever  had,"  said  Abel  Donnelly,  was  one 
night  a  year  ago.  I  had  been  on  the  stand  for  nine  hours  and  hadn't 
seen  the  ghost  of  a  call.  It  was  a  mizzable,  wet,  cold  fall  night,  so 
vit  last  1  piled  onto  the  box  and  druv  to  the  stables.  When  I  opened 
the  coach  door  there  I  was  reglar  paralyzed  like.  There,  onto  the  back 
seat,  sat  one  of  the  prettiest  girls  I  ever  see.  She  had  a  pale  face,  big 
blue  eyes,  hair  the  color  of  the  silk  of  new  corn,  and  hands  like  a 
baby.  She  was  bareheaded  and  wore  a  black  dress  and  I  could  see 
the  stuff  was  as  rich  as  it  was  plain. 

"  *  Hello !  Hello  !"'  says  I,  and  I  tell  you  it  was  about  all  I  could  do. 

"She  had  been  setting  straight  up,  looking  at  me  with  her  eyes 
wide  open.  At  the  sound  of  my  voice  she  gave  a  violent  start,  shut 
her  eyes,  opened  them  again  and  ripped  out  a  scream  fit  to  raise  the 
dead.    Then  she  dropped  as  a  lump. 


«22 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


"  We  ran  for  a  doctor.    He  put  her  to  bed  and  next  morning  she 
^as  all  right. 

"  A  somnambulist,  you  know.  She  belonged  to  wealthy  folks  that 
lived  on  Fourteenth  street,  near  the  square,  and  had  wandered  out 
ihat  night  and  slipped  into  my  hack  just  before  I  started." 

There  are  instances  of  honesty  on  the  part  of  our  night-hawks  re- 
corded, in  spite  of  the  bad  name  they  bear.  The  late  Edwin  Adams 
used  to  tell  one.  He  had  returned  to  this  city  from  a  professional  tour, 
and  engaged  a  cab  at  the  Pennsylvania  railroad  ferry  to  take  him  up 
town.  He  had  $600  in  bank  notes  in  a  hand-satchel — and  it  was  about  " 
all  the  money  he  owned  in  the  world.  When  he  got  out  he  forgot  it, 
and  in  the  excitement  of  meeting  friends  in  tne  hotel  bar  it  continued 
to  remain  unnoticed  by  him.  He  went  to  his  room  and  was  undressing 
ivhen  there  came  a  knock  at  his  door,  and  a  rough-looking  man  entered. 
It  was  the  cabman,  and  he  had  the  satchel  in  his  hand.  "  So,  before  I 
actually  knew  I  had  lost  it,  it  was  returned  to  me,"  Adams  remarked, 
am  sorry  to  say  I  was  so  overjoyed  that  I  gave  my  man  $25." 

"  How  do  you  mean  sorry  ?" 
Because  it  sent  him  on  a  drunk,  and  he  nearly  killed  his  next 
fare  in  a  fight  over  his  charges,  and  was  sent  to  the  Island  to  cool 
off." 

The  night-hawk,  as,  in  fact,  the  day  hackman,  too,  is  of  independent 
and  aggressive  characteristics.  He  regards  a  passenger  with  scorn, 
and  never  misses  an  opportunity  to  express  his  contempt  for  him. 
There  was  a  very  curious  case  of  this  sort  before  a  local  police  court 
some  years  ago.  A,  gentleman,  who  had  been  beaten  almost  to  a  mummy, 
caused  the  arrest  of  an  Erie  Ferry  hackman,  his  assailant.  He  had 
taken  the  latter's  hack  at  midnight  to  drive  to  the  Astor  House.  The 
man  was  drunk,  and  the  passenger  soon  noticed  that  he  was  not  going 
in  the  right  direction.    He  poked  his  head  out  and  said  : 

*'  You're  driving  wrong." 

*'  Who  is  ?"  demanded  the  man. 

"You  are." 

"  Well,  Fm  bossing  this  funeral,  ain't  I  ?" 
"  But  I  want  to  go  to  the  Astor  House." 

"  You  do  ?     You  don't  want  to  go  to  no  such  place  as  that.  The 
i'ifth  Avenue's  your  racket." 

The  fellow  was  too  drunk  to  be  argued  with,  and  actually  did 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


25 


drive  to  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel.  There  his  fare  refused  to  pay,  and 
the  harvey  "  took  it  out  of  his  hide." 

They  tell  of  one  night-hawk  who  was  beaten  at  his  own  game. 
He  carried  a  fare  to  a  hotel  and  demanded  about  three  times  his  just 
due. 

The  passenger  refused  to  pay  it,  and  the  hackman  seized  his 
valise,  which  was  on  the  box. 

"All  right,"  said  the  fare,  "you're  welcome  to  it.  A  fair  exchange 
is  no  robbery." 

And,  jumping  on  the  box,  he  lashed  the  horses  into  a  gallop  and 
carried  off  the  hack. 

He  delivered  it  at  the  first  police  station  he  came  to,  and  when 
the  owner  tried  to  recover  it  he  was  deprived  of  his  license. 

The  valise  and  its  contents,  which  were  a  few  dirty  collars,  were 
not  worth  together  two  dollars. 

Several  deaths  have  occurred  in  the  night-hacks.  As  if  to  balance 
the  account,  some  births  are  also  recorded.  The  most  dramatic  case 
of  death  in  a  New  York  hack  occurred  some  years  ago,  and  as  the 
victim  was  a  member  of  a  prominent  family,  it  was  hushed  up  care- 
fully. 

The  victim  was  a  young  broker  who  had  been  hit  hard  by  Black 
Friday.  Since  that  time  he  had  gambled  heavily.  On  the  night  of 
his  death  a  night-hack  picked  him  up  at  the  door  of  a  gaming-house. 

As  they  passed  through  Union  Square  the  driver  was  startled  by 
the  report  of  a  pistol  inside. 

His  fare  had  blown  his  brains  out. 

Night-hawk  Neary  had  a  funny  exper^jnce  of  a  violent  sort  once. 
He  took  a  man  and  woman  up  at  Hines'  Central  Park  restaurant. 
They  were  a  fine-looking  pair  ;  the  woman  strikingly  beautiful  and 
the  man  splendidly  handsome.  Both  were  elegantly  dressed  ;  they 
had  been  drinking.  Before  he  had  driven  five  blocks  Neary  became 
conscious  that  he  had  a  lively  load.  In  less  than  ten  seconds  every 
window  in  the  hack  was  smashed.    He  pulled  up  and  got  down. 

"  I  niver  see  such  a  fright  in  my  born  days,"  said  Neary ;  "'twas 
•Tirrible.  Both  av  'em  was  noigli  stripped,  an'  a  batin'  an'  a  clawin' 
wan  another.  Sure,  the  language  they  foired  at  aich  other  'ud  make 
a  truck  driver  sick.  The  woman  was  gettin'  the  worst  ov  it,  so  I 
lays  hands  on  the  man  an'  pulls  him  out.     So  soon  as  I  does  this 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


the  woman  jumps  at  me.  Betune  tlie  two  I  was  a  foine  candidate  for 
a  hospital.    I  didn't  got  over  that  bating  for  a  month." 

The  romance  writer  would  be  hard  pushed  if  he  had  not  the 
hack  to  help  him  in  his  thrilling  narrative.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the 
story  of  metropolitan  life  has  yet  to  be  written  in  which  a  hack  or 
cab  does  not  figure.  But,  in  sober  reality,  the  night-hawk,  whose 
labors  extend  over  the  most  romantic  hours,  meets  little  in  life  but 
grim  reality.  An  occasional  appointment,  with  a  young  man  waiting 
inside  for  an  eloping  fair  one,  or  a  search  by  a  jealous  woman  in 
pursuit  of  a  false  lover,  are  the  most  fanciful  episodes  he  encounters. 

One  night-hawk  tells  how  he  drove  up  and  down  Fourteenth 
street  one  evening  from  8  till  12  o'clock,  with  the  vrifo  of  a  stock  broker 
inside  watching,  with  a  revolver  in  her  hand,  for  her  husband  to  come 
out  of  the  back-door  with  an  actress  whom  she  suspected  him  of  pre- 
ferring to  herself. 

"  But  he  didn't  come  that  night,  and  it  v/as  lucky  for  him,  for 
there  was  murder  in  that  woman's  soul." 

Occasionally  the  night-hawk  leagues  with  thieves,  and  assists  in  a 
midnight  robbery.  But  this  does  not  often  happen.  Robbers,  when 
they  need  a  hack,  usually  hire  one,  and  constitute  one  of  their  number 
ihe  driver. 

The  establishment  of  all-night  lines  on  the  street  cars  has  cut 
heavily  into  the  business  of  the  night-hawk,  and  reduced  the  numbers 
in  the  trade  at  least  fifty  per  cent,  in  the  last  five  years.  There  will 
not,  probably,  be  a  further  perceptible  diminution,  unless  some  regular 
system  of  public  hacks,  like  the  once  proposed  Metropolitan  Cab 
Company,  is  established.  Then  the  night-hawk's  knell  will  have  rung. 
Until  then  his  field  will  be  his  own,  and  the  extravagances  and  dissi- 
pations of  this  great  city,  of  whose  night  side  steady-going  citizens 
knov»r  too  little,  will  provide  him  with  employment — precarious,  indeed, 
but  still  enough  to  keep  his  eye  in  practice  and  his  beak  keen 
for  prey. 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


25 


CHAPTEE  III. 

BELLES     OF     THE  KITCHEN. 

I  am  not  personally  opposed  to  servant  girls,  and  I  believe  that  a 
good  cook  who  does  not  have  more  than  one  cousin  come  to  see  her 
and  eat  up  all  the  cold  chicken  and  drink  up  all  the  bottled  beer,  is  a 
jewel  worth  $20  a  week  and  her  board.  I  believe  also  that  the  cham- 
l^ermaid  who  has  the  moral  courage  to  avoid  reading  your  letters  and 
using  your  hair  oil  is  an  angel,  worthy  of  substantial  financial  recogni- 
tion. But  the  charges  of  pilfering  brought  against  the  guild  are  unfor- 
tunately too  well  founded  in  fact  to  be  lightly  dismissed.  I  do  not 
care  a  rap  about  the  wages.  A  good  girl  is  worth  more  than  a  sloven, 
and  any  attempt  to  bind  them  down  to  a  set  price  is  absurd.  There 
are  as  many  grades  in  servant-galdom  as  there  are  in  the  trade  of  car- 
pentering. 

Before  proceeding  to  a  consideration  of  how  some  professional 
cooks  and  chambermaids  work,  let  me  digress  a  moment  to  state  that  I 
am  not  one  of  those  who  object  to  pretty  "  slaveys." 

Take  a  tour  through  society  and  you  will  find  that  there  is  a  strong 
prejudice  against  a  comely  face  and  lissome  form  when  the  owner  is  an 
applicant  for  an  humble  position  in  the  household.  This  is  particularly 
so  in  the  establishments  of  young  married  people. 

Bansack  your  memory  and  see  if  every  newly  married  couple  you 
know  do  not  possess  some  gigantic  negress,  cross-eyed  Scotch-woman, 
or  equally  unprepossessing  specimen  of  femininity  to  hand  around  the 
coffee. 

That  reminds  me  of  the  very  old  joke  about  the  grand-mother  of 
the  young  husband,  who  said  to  the  latter' s  wife  abruptly,  during  a 
conversation  on  the  responsibility  of  housekeeping  : 

"  You  will  have  a  girl,  of  course?"  She  blushed  and  answered  thai 
she  couldn't  tell.    Charley  hoped  it  would  be  a  boy. 

How  much  more  sensible  than  the  average  wife's  plan  of  procedure  ^ 
If  as  that  of  the  Philadelphia  wife  who  ransacked  the  intelligence  offices ' 
of  that  moral  city  until  she  found  a  most  charming  handmaiden  whom 
she  duly  installed  in  her  home. 

A  much  elder  fiiend  in  the  matrimonial  line  called  to  take  lunch 
«ne  day,  and  beheld  this  phenomenon  demurely  flitting  abont  the* 
iftble. 


26 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


When  she  left  the  room  the  wife  of  experience  seized  the  hand  of 
the  experimentalist,  and  taking  her  to  one  side,  said  in  a  horrified 
whisper  : 

"  You  have  committed  a  grievous  error." 

"How  so?" 

"  That  girl !  " 

"  Well,  what  of  her  ?  " 

"  She  will  never  do." 

"  She  is  an  admirable  servant." 

"  I  grant  you  that,  but  she  is  too  pretty." 

"  Not  at  all.  I  got  her  on  purpose.  When  George  thinks  of  uk% 
and  then  Abigail,  he  will  consider  that  there  is  no  place  like  home,  and 
will  begin  to  practice  that  domesticity  which  I  hope  to  see  become  a 
habit." 

Let  us  take  the  limited  express  and  return  from  Philadelphia  to  a 
consideration  of  the  subject  of  servant-girl  stealings. 
It  is  of  two  kinds — spasmodic  and  organized. 

A  girl  sometimes  steals  simply  because  an  opportunity  is  ofTered* 
The  drama  of  Eve's  temptation  is  acted  all  over  again,  the  apple  sup- 
plemented by  a  bit  of  lace,  a  diamond  ear-ring,  or  a  dozen  spoons, 
richly  chased. 

If  she  takes  them  the  girl  becomes  hotly  chased,  and  is  usually 
detected  through  the  medium  of  the  pawn-shop. 

The  professionals  either  act  directly  for  themselves  or  are  th© 
agents  of  an  outside  gang.  They  frequently  make  burglaries  the  easiest 
jobs  in  the  world  by  undoing  catches,  slipping  bolts  and  locks,  and 
the  like. 

No  one  can  scream  more  realistically  and  piercingly  than  this 
kind  of  a  servant  girl  when  she  discovers  in  the  morning  that  the  house 
has  been  robbed. 

The  co-operative  plan  is  the  latest,  and  I  must  confess,  most  inge- 
nious of  all  the  methods  devised  by  these  ladies  of  the  swell-mob  who 
go  out  to  service.  They  copied  it  from  honest  but  lazy  girls,  who  found 
that  it  was  possible  to  live  nicely  in  the-follow'ig  manner.  Say  there 
are  four  of  them. 

They  take  a  large  room  with  two  double  beds;  or  two  rooms. 

Two  of  them  enter  their  names  at  the  intelligence  offices,  and  in 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


27 


good  time  obtain  positions.  While  they  are  at  work  their  board  and 
lodging  are  naturally  secured.  Their  wages  goes  into  the  common 
pool  which  supports  the  other  two  in  idleness.  When  a  month  is  up 
the  situations  will  be  reversed. 

The  idle  ones,  sometimes  recommended  to  the  very  places  of  the 
others  by  the  girls  who  are  so  sorry  that  they  have  to  go  to  Ireland 
to  see  their  mothers,  who  are  dying,  take  the  cars,  and  for  a  month 
the  other  twain  have  an  opportunity  to  discover  the  pleasures  of  dolcp. 
far  niente. 

When  the  girls  are  not  good  and  honest,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the 
unoccupied  moments  can  be  made  profitable. 

This  very  pretty  plan  of  copartnership  has,  as  I  have  said,  been 
adopted  by  the  thieves.  Naturally  their  apartments  are  very  swell, 
and  are  certainly  most  spacio  as,  since  they  have  to  accommodate  the 
articles  run  oif  by  the  members  of  the  guild  who  are  at  work. 

I  was  with  an  officer  once  in  charge  of  a  descent  party  upon  one 
of  these  communistic  homes,  which  were  very  rare  then. 

The  sight  that  met  the  gaze  when  the  doors  to  a  suite  of  rooms  in 
an  east  side  apartment  house  was  forced,  staggered  even  the  officers, 
and  paralyzed  me. 

We  were  after  some  stolen  property — a  trivial  amount — and  we 
expected  to  find  nothing  more  pretentious  than  the  home  of  a  brace 
of  servant  girls,  out  of  work  and  pursued  by  justice,  would  naturally 
be. 

What  did  we  find? 

Three  or  four  young  women — it  was  in  the  evening — dressed  in 
silks  and  drinking  genuine  champagne  handed  about  by  certain  gentle- 
men of  unexceptionable  dress  and  easy  manner. 

Or,  rather,  that  was  what  they  had  been  doing.  The  crashing  in 
of  the  door  had  made  a  huddled  tableau  of  the  scene. 

Before  anything  was  done,  before  anybody  spoke,  I  had  a  chance 
to  gaze  about  and  note  that  cheap  and  gaudy  pictures,  but  still  pic- 
tures, hung  upon  the  walls,  and  that  taere  was  a  piano  in  the  parlor. 

I  should  have  liked  to 

"  Have  heard  her  play 
On  the  pi-a-nay," 
but  it  was  work  and  not  play  the  posse  had  before  them. 


■28 


MYSTERIES    OF  NEW  YORK. 


One  young  man  tried  to  reach  liberty  by  the  fire-escape,  but  he 
found  it  already  occupied  by  a  policeman,  who,  singularly  enough,  had 
climbed  up  it  to  ayoid  a  conflagration  in  China. 

The  discoyery  of  the  insignificant  goods  we  were  in  quest  of  led 
to  the  seizure  of  about  two  hundred  pawn  tickets  and  trunks  just 
filled  with  bed-clothing,  dress-stuffs,  linen  goods,  etc. 

The  damsels  got  long  terms,  and  the  inconsolable  young  men  lost 
yery  charming  companions. 

Being  a  deep  student  of  human  nature,  who  neyer  neglects,  if  he 
can  help  it,  an  opportunity  to  increase  his  stock  of  knowledge,  I  re- 
turned to  the  house  some  time  after,  and  by  ingratiating  myself  with 
the  wife  of  the  Dutchman  who  keeps  the  beer  saloon  in  the  basement, 
obtained  some  points  bearing  on  the  life  led  by  these  merry  domestics, 
all  of  whom  took  turns  at  working  out  and  looking  as  modest  and 
pious  as  a  Quaker  tomb-stone. 

I  discoyered  that  it  was  a  perpetual  round  of  pleasure,  the  actors 
changing  as  the  exigencies  of  the  trade  required.  Carriage  rides  to  the 
park  in  fine  weather  were  by  no  means  infrequent,  while  a  German 
musician  from  the  Bowery  who  was  hired  by  them  to  work  the  piano, 
frequently  kept  it  banging  away  until  it  was  time  for  the  horse-car 
conductor  on  the  next  floor  to  get  up  and  haye  his  breakfast. 

"What  a  homily  it  all  is  !  These  brazen  thieyes  liye  like  pampered 
cocottes,  while  the  hard-working,  honest  woman  broils  herself  with  the 
beefsteak  oyer  the  stoye,  breaks  her  back  oyer  the  washing-tub,  and 
leads  a  life  as  laborious,  in  some  instances,  as  that  of  the  galley 
slaye. 

And  now  I  come  to  another  gang  that  my  housekeeping  readers 
will  do  well  to  steer  clear  of. 
The  blackmailers. 

This  is  also  a  new  science,  and  of  course,  will  not  be  known  to  the 
police  for  some  time  to  come.  The  modus  operandi  is  simplicity  itself, 
the  one  requirement  of  getting  an  intelligent  educated  girl  in  a  rich 
f  amily,  being  observed. 

She  says  nothing. 

But  she  uses  eyes  and  ears. 

If  the  master  of  the  house  has  a  mistress  she  is  dead  sure  to  as- 
certain it. 


MYSTERIES    OF  NEW   YORK.  29 

If  a  gentleman  comes  to  lunch,  and  the  circumstance  is  never 
mentioned  to  "hubby"  at  dinner,  she  has  a  valuable  item. 

Letters  are  sometimes  found  on  the  floor.  If  short  her  brain  re- 
tains the  contents  until  she  can  get  to  her  room ;  if  long  she  boldly 
pockets  the  missive,  engages  in  the  agonized  search  for  it  with  madame, 
copies  it  at  her  leisure,  and  then  joyously  finds  it  wherever  she 
chooses,  receiving  thanks  and  a  dollar  bill  with  becoming  modesty. 

Sometimes  the  head  of  the  house  speaks  of  financial  difficulties, 
and  intimates  to  his  wife  over  the  desert  that  it  is  necessary  for  him 
to  do  something  desperate.  More  caxiital  for  the  silent,  swift  and 
capable  servant. 

In  extreme  cases  she  will  make  the  future  operations  doubly  sure 
by  putting  herself  in  her  master's  way,  and  coyly  allowing  him  those 
liberties  which  she  forces  upon  him. 

At  last  all  is  ready.  The  mine  is  laid.  It  is  only  necessary,  torch 
in  one  hand,  while  the  other  is  extended,  palm  upwards,  to  approach 
the  gentleman  and  demand  his  money  or  his  reputation. 

The  servant  girl  rarely  does  this.    The  master  mind  behind  her ; 
lier  lover — some  dissolute  chap  with  rare  intellectual  qualities  and  a 
distaste  for  work,  writes  the  first  note,  which  is  the  primal  bomb. 
^'My  dear  sir  : 

"  I  will  begin  by  stating  that  I  am  a  blackmailer  and  want  money. 
I  am  aware  that  my  operations  are  not  looked  kindly  upon  by  the  law, 

I)ut  desperation  is  my  excuse.    You  have  a  mistress  at  No.  Blank 

street,  and  it  is  the  extravagance  of  keeping  two  establishments  which 
have  induced  you  to  falsify  your  accounts.  Meet  me  at  the  Battery, 
Staten  Island  slip,  this  10  P.  m.,  with  $  and  I  will  keep  quiet." 

Or  to  madame : 

"  I  know  all.    I  have  in  my  possession  a  copy  of  the  letter  in 

which  Mr.    urges  you  to  elope  from  your  *  fool  of  a  husband.'  I 

must  have  money,"  etc.,  etc. 

Of  course  there  is  a  letter  written  to  this  eloping  gentleman  if  lie 
is  a  married  man,  and  perhaps  a  fourth  one  to  his  wife,  offering  to  ex- 
pose her  husband's  perfidy  with  dates  and  names  for  a  handsome  con- 
sideration. 

There  are  many  other  ways  in  which  the  servant  girl  can  make 
matters  lively  and  interesting  in  a  family,  but  I  think  I  have  shown  up 
enough  villainy  for  one  chapter. 


30 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


When  I  get  married  and  settled  down,  I  shall  insist  upon  Mrs 
Prowler  investing  in  the  prettiest,  sweetest  deaf  and  dumb  girl  she  can 
find. 

I  will  be  an  asylum  to  her,  and  as  long  as  she  won't  hear  what  she 
couldn't  speak  of  anyhow,  matters  will  be  serene. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

CURIOUS  METROPOLITAN  INDUSTRIES. 

That  there  are  more  ways  than  one  of  making  a  living  everybody 
knows.  Exactly  how  many  there  are,  in  a  great  city  like  New  York 
it  would  puzzle  anyone  but  an  Asmodeus  to  say  with  exactness.  I  have 
came  to  the  conclusion,  after  a  searching  investigation  of  the  matter^ 
that  the  number  of  queer  businesses  which  furnish  people  with  a  sub- 
sistence in  the  metropolis,  can  only  be  defined  by  that  algebraical  sign 
which  represents  the  unknown  quantity,  X.  When  I  had  jotted  down 
the  hundred  and  twenty-fifth  my  notebook  gave  out,  and  a  few  thousand 
more  escaped  my  memory. 

There  are  certainly  none  among  the  many  more  curious  than  that 
practiced  by  Conrad  Stein. 

Conrad  is  a  professional  sauer  kraut  cutter.  His  stock  in  trade 
consists  of  a  machine  constructed  on  the  plan  of  a  tobacco  cutter — a 
long  knife,  fastened  at  one  end  to  an  upright  by  a  loose  pin,  which 
works  up  and  down  on  a  block  of  wood  and  his  muscle.  Nature  pro- 
vided the  last  for  him,  and  the  knife  cost  him  $1.25  five  years  ago.  He 
fears  he  will  have  to  get  a  new  one  in  1900.  His  business  does  not,  as 
may  be  perceived,  call  for  a  very  extensive  original  capital. 

Conrad,  as  far  as  can  be  ascertained,  is  one  of  five  men  who  practice 
the  craft  of  cutting  cabbage  for  the  stock  German  delicacy.  They 
travel  from  house  to  house  in  the  Teutonic  quarter,  soliciting  trade^ 
and  in  addition  to  this  casual  custom  have  regular  customers  whom 
they  visit  at  stated  periods.  They  charge  ten  cents  a  barrel  for  cutting 
cabbage,  and  in  the  brisk  season,  from  August  to  May,  average  about 
two  dollars  a  day  at  it. 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


31 


Sauer  kraut  is  essentially  a  winter  dish.  There  are  people  who 
eat  it  "  all  the  time,"  as  the  song  on  the  subject  says  ;  but  they  have 
to  cut  their  cabbage  themselves.  Sauer  kraut  cutting,  as  a  trade,  has 
flourished  here  some  years  now.  Formerly  the  grocery  store  men  used 
to  manufacture  it  in  vast  quantities,  and  sell  it  at  fifteen  and  twenty 
cents  a  quart.  But  now  wise  housewives  buy  their  cabbage  by  the 
wholesale,  hire  Conrad  Stein  or  one  of  his  rivals  to  cut  them  up,  and 
pack  the  shredded  result  in  barrels  with  salt  and  water  to  ferment- 
until  it  is  ripe  for  consumption.  This  has  brought  the  price  of  sauer 
kraut  at  the  groceries  down  to  ten  cents  a  quart,  and  the  grocers,  o£ 
course,  denounce  the  cabbage  cutters  as  frauds. 

The  cat'-meat  man  represents  another  of  the  queer  crafts  of  New 
York.  Our  down-town  warehouses  are  all  infested  with  rats,  and  onQ> 
of  the  articles  in  their  insurance  policies,  as  well  as  their  own  interest, 
requires  them  to  keep  a  sufficient  number  of  cats  to  preserve  their 
stocks  from  ruin  by  the  rodents.  Consequently  there  is  a  vast  felino 
army  billeted  in  the  great  mart. 

Formerly  the  cats  were  fed  by  their  owners,  and  on  Sundays,  wheiii 
the  stores  were  closed,  they  went  hungry;  but  some  years  ago  a  clear- 
headed man,  who  happened  to  be  out  oi  work  at  the  time,  hit  upon  * 
bright  idea. 

He  had  heard  how  cats  and  dogs  are  provided  with  food  in  Lon- 
don by  men  who  make  that  species  of  catering  their  business,  and  d(i- 
termined  to  try  the  plan  in  New  York.  He  began  with  a  basket,  out  of 
which  he  peddled  portions  of  meat  to  the  various  warehouse  cats  at 
the  rate  of  five  cents  a  head  per  day.  Where  a  number  of  cats  were 
kept  he  fed  them  at  a  considerably  reduced  rate  by  the  week. 

He  now  uses  a  little  pony  cart,  and  sells  over  two  hundred  poumla 
of  meat  a  day.  Several  rivals,  profiting  by  his  example,  are  now  en- 
gaged in  the  business.  In  spite  of  this  opposition,  however,  the 
pioneer  cat's-meat  man  makes  thiHy-five  or  forty-five  dollars  a  week 
over  all  expenses. 

The  cats  all  know  him,  and  his  progress  through  the  streets  where 
he  makes  his  rounds  in  the  early  morning  is  attended  by  a  perfect 
army  of  felines,  all  mewing  and  purring  around  him,  scampering  about 
his  cart  wheels  and  under  his  pony's  legs. 

Horse  meat  and  coarse  cuts  of  beef  are  the  chief  diet  furnished  by 


32 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YOEK. 


the  cat's-meat  man  to  his  boarders.  On  Friday,  by  way  of  variety,  tbey 
get  fish,  presumably  catfish.  Cats  are  fond  of  fish,  and  Friday  is  said 
io  be  marked  with  a  red  letter  in  their  calendar. 

In  London  the  cat  and  dog  meat  men  feed  their  clients  on  the  flesh 
of  animals  which  have  died  natural  deaths.  Here,  however,  all  the 
meat  is  bought  in  the  markets,  and  if  it  is  not  exactly  porterhouse 
steak,  ifc  is,  at  least,  fit  to  eat. 

If  cats  have  their  peripatetic  caterers,  so  do  their  masters.  There 
is  in  existence  in  this  city  a  so-called  "Catering  Company,"  which  con- 
tracts to  furnish  meals  regularly  at  the  offices  or  private  houses  of  its 
customers.  The  food  is  cooked  in  an  extensive  kitchen,  which  serves 
as  a  sort  of  central  office,  and  sent  off  to  the  boarders  in  wagons. 

Two  or  three  meals  a  day  are  served  as  desired,  and  the  price 
varies,  according  to  the  number  furnished,  from  seven  dollars  to  ten 
dollars  a  week  for  a  single  person.  The  bill  of  fare  is  varied  every 
day.  It  consists  commonly  of  three  dishes  for  breakfast,  and  of  from 
five  to  seven,  with  soup  and  dessert,  for  dinner. 

The  company  makes  a  specialty  of  vegetables,  which  it  provides  in 
vast  variety,  and  without  stint.  It  is  kept  warm,  while  in  the  wagons, 
by  a  patented  process,  and  is  served  in  a  most  palatable  condition. 

The  chief  business  of  the  catering  company,  so  far,  has  been  with 
small  families  of  adults  who  live  in  furnished  lodgings,  and  with  lazy 
bachelors  similarly  housed.  The  china,  linen  and  service  are  excellent, 
and  the  menic  choice  enough  to  suit  every  appetite. 

Less  elaborate  meals  are  served  at  a  lower  rate ;  but  the  company 
aims  to  secure  a  class  of  custom  of  the  better  sort,  and  does  not  care  to 
develop  the  cheap  trade.  The  business  has  long  been  a  profitable  one 
in  London  and  Paris,  and  will  probably  prove  lucrative  here. 

Another  Euroj)ean  custom  which  is  proving  profitable  here  is  the 
out-of-door  sale  of  refreshing  beverages.  In  France,  Spain,  Italy  and 
Germany  one  meets  the  lemonade  or  the  sugar -water  seller  at  every 
street  corner.  The  brawny  bull-fighter  of  Madrid  or  the  stalwart 
workingman  of  Paris  and  Lyons  tosses  off  the  glass  of  lemonade  or 
sweetened  water  as  our  laborer  does  his  lager,  or  something  stronger. 

Five  summers  ago  a  man  appeared  on  Park  Bow,  retailing  lemon- 
ade from  a  bucket  at  two,  three  and  five  cents  a  glass.  The  speculation 
proved  a  wonderful  hit.  To-day  he  has  a  big  stand  near  the  spot  where 


THE  STEEET  MUSICIAN, 


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MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


33 


he  firtst  began  business,  and  sells  gallons  of  his  refreshing  liquid  daily. 
He  even  compounds  fancy  drinks,  such  as  lemonade  with  eggs,  or  beef 
extract,  for  roystering  customers  whose  overnight  potations  had  inca- 
pacitated their  stomachs  for  the  digestion  of  more  solid  food. 

He  has  found  hundreds  of  imitators,  male  and  female,  and  a  fruit 
or  candy  stand  is  hardly  complete  now  without  its  lemonadepail.  The 
lemonade  sellers  have  driven  almost  all  the  old  time  out-door  soda 
water  stands  from  the  field. 

They  charge  from  one  to  ten  cents,  according  to  the  size  of  glasses 
and  the  extra  ingredients  in  the  compound.  Straight  lemonade  is 
nearly  all  profit.  Half  a  dollar's  worth  of  ice,  lemons  and  sugar  will 
make  three  gallons  of  it,  containing  about  one  hundred  five-cent 
glasses.    The  reader  can  continue  the  calculation  for  himself. 

On  one  of  the  hot  days  of  last  summer  the  Park  Row  lemonade 
bazaar  dispensed  twenty-one  gallons.  Its  summer  average  was  about 
fifteen  gallons.  Iced  milk,  too,  made  its  appearance  at  many  of  the 
stands  this  year,  and  had  an  extensive  sale. 

There  are  other  small  traffickers  who  make  good  livings  by  ped- 
dling oysters,  mutton  and  pork  pies,  sandwiches  and  waffles  among  the 
down  town  offices.  There  are  also  fruit  and  candy  peddlers  who  have 
regular  routes  in  the  same  sections,  and  sell  considerable  quantities  of 
their  wares  which  are  commonly  supposed  to  be  the  peculiar  weak- 
nesses of  small  boys  and  girls,  to  staid  business  men  and  dapper 
clerks. 

Many  of  these  itinerant  tradesmen  have  been  in  the  business  for 
years  and  are  quite  well  off.  In  several  cases  they  are  the  descendants 
of  those  who  were  in  the  trade  half  a  century  ago.  Old  Ann  Sullivan, 
a  well-known  candy  and  apple  woman,  has  served  some  half  a  dozen 
big  business  houses  daily  for  nearly  twenty  years.  One  of  them  moved 
almost  a  mile  from  its  old  site  a  year  ago,  but  Ann  appeared  in  the 
new  place  at  her  usual  hour  on  the  day  of  the  reopening,  and  has  not 
missed  a  day  since. 

The  general  public  has  little,  if  any,  idea  of  the  profits  made  in 
these  petty  trades.  Of  course  there  are  no  fortunes  made  at  them,  but 
they  afford,  in  almost  all  cases,  a  fair  living,  and  something  to  spare. 
People  who  have  stands  at  busy  corners,  or  who  work  over  regular 
-•outes,  invariably  make  a  good  profit.    One  peanut  vender,  at  Third 


34 


MYSTERIES  OF  NEW  YORK. 


avenue  and  Stuyvesant  street,  averages  a  sale  of  three  bushels  ot  that 
fruit  a  day.  This  merchant  has  a  little  steam  engine,  which  he  paid 
$75  for,  to  turn  the  drum  in  which  he  roasts  the  nuts. 

There  are  scores  of  stands  which  count  on  the  regular  sale  of  a 
"bushel  and  a  half  of  peanuts  per  dien.  The  Italians,  who  make  the 
most  money  and  spend  the  least,  invariably  have  stockings  well  stuffed 
with  savings. 

There  are  old  men  and  women  who  pick  up  many  a  dollar  by  the 
sale  of  cakes  and  sweatmeats  of  strange  composition,  at  the  doors  of 
the  school-houses,  where  they  take  their  places  as  regular  as  the  sun 
rises,  except  in  vacation  time.  Then  they  probably  lock  themselves  up 
and  replenish  their  stocks  for  the  next  season,  in  the  mystery  and 
seclusion  that  alchemistic  task  requires. 

Inquiry  among  the  fruit  and  peanut  venders  resulted  in  the 
discoyery  that  they  average  in  summer  a  profit  of  from  $2.50  to  $10  a 
day,  and  a  few  run  even  higher.  In  winter  they  make  very  little,  if 
anything.  Most  of  them  pay  rent  for  their  stands  to  the  lessees  of  the 
Jiouses  in  front  of  which  they  are  located,  and  they  keep  open  in  cold 
weather  solely  to  make  money  enough  to  defray  this  expense. 

The  gains  by  the  venders  who  sell  from  barrows  are  more  precari* 
ous.  There  is  an  ordinance  against  these  barrows  being  stationary 
and  obstructing  the  roadway,  and  the  policemen  keep  them  moving 
pretty  constantly,  so  they  do  not  enjoy  the  opportunity  of  attracting 
custom  such  as  that  the  permanent  stands  command. 

There  are  few  things  which  cannot  nowadays  be  purchased  from 
street  venders.  Ganes,  candies,  cigars  and  cologne,  furnishing  goods, 
cheap  jewelry,  toys,  tinware,  even  boots  and  shoes — all  have  their  out- 
door marts.  These  articles  are  invariably  of  the  cheapest  make,  and 
though  the  prices  are  preposterously  low,  they  still  admit  a  profit  of 
from  thirty  to  sixty  per  cent. 

The  itinerant  peddlers  of  these  wares,  professionally  known  as 
**fakirs,"  are  the  worst  off,  and  have  a  hard  enough  time  of  it,  especially 
if  they  have  to  pay  cash  for  their  stock  and  risk  the  loss  involved  by  a 
failure  to  sell.  "Well-known  "fakirs"  usually  have  credit  with  one  or 
another  of  the  several  dealers  who  supply  this  class  of  traders,  and  <5an 
return  such  of  their  stock  as  remains  unsold. 

An  active  and  successful  "faker"  will  earn  a  couple  of  dollars  a  day 
with  a  popular  article  ;  but  there  are  many  more  who  are  glad  to  pick 


A  VICTIM  IN  THE  TOILS. 


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MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


35 


up  enough  to  pay  for  a  bed  in  a  ten  cent  lodging-house  and  a  meal  at  a 
tramps'  restaurant.  The  regular  "fakirs"  are  a  very  curious  body. 
There  are  men  among  them  who  have  peddled  their  way  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  North  American  Continent,  and  som'*  who  have  wan- 
dered into  the  tropics  and  South  America. 

"Jake  the  Fakir"  spent  three  years  under  the  Southern  Cross  sell- 
ing rubber  stamps  and  marking  plates.  Drink  is  commonly  the 
*'fakir's"  bane,  and  whether  he  earns  much  or  little  it  all  goes  the  same 
road.  They  are  a  gregarious  folk,  and  if  you  find  one  in  any  of  the 
cheap  domitories  down  town,  which  are  about  the  only  houses  they 
know,  you  are  tolerably  certain  to  discover  others  in  the  same  place. 
Like  the  thieves,  they  have  a  slang  patois,  which,  if  it  is  not  particu- 
larly melodious,  is  at  least  expressive  and  picturesque. 

The  saw-filers  and  knife-grinders  form  a  numerous  body.  Their 
labors  now,  however,  are  chiefiy  in  demand  for  private  houses.  A 
peculiarity  with  them  is  that  in  summer,  when  business  is  dull  here  in 
consequence  of  the  absence  of  people  from  town,  they  take  long  pro- 
fessional trips  into  the  country. 

Itinerant  tinkers,  glaziers  and  umbrella  and  clock  menders  find 
most  of  their  employment  in  the  country  now,  too.  So  do  the  sweeps. 
There  are  still  half  a  dozen  professional  chimney  sweeps  in  New  York. 
But  the  new  styles  of  chimney  building  and  the  invention  of  patent 
sweepers  have  trenched  on  their  field  until  it  has  become  a  very  limited 
one,  indeed.  The  old-fashioned  houses  in  the  rural  districts  are  their 
best  hold  now,  and  they  tramp  from  county  to  county  pretty  much  all 
the  year  round.  From  $3  to  $10  is  the  price  paid  for  a  job  of  chimney 
sweeping. 

In  return,  the  country  sends  us,  at  least,  one  notable  character  in 
our  queer  businesses.  That  is  the  frog-catcher.  The  artists  are  usually 
either  Frenchmen  or  negroes,  and  they  come  in  from  Jersey,  Long 
Island  and  Westchester  laden  with  frogs  and  water-cresses,  the  collec- 
tion of  which  latter  delicacy  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  side  business  with 
them.  They  also  gather  medicinal  herbs,  which  they  retail  among 
their  compatriots  and  to  queer  drug  stores  in  the  proletarian  districts. 

Quite  a  trade  has  sprung  up,  in  the  last  couple  of  years,  in  wooden 
shoes,  or  sabots,  and  a  little  colony  of  Frenchmen  is  kept  busy  in  a 
shop  in  South  Fifth  avenue  supplying  it.  The  shoes  are  shaped  out 
€l  blocks  of  ash  or  whitewood,  and  hollowed  out  with  fire.    They  cost 


36 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


from  one  to  two  and  a  half  dollars  a  pair,  and  will  last  as  long  as  tin 
patches  can  be  put  on  them. 

They  seem  to  be  worn  by  workingmen,  members  of  the  French 
colony  in  this  city,  and  farmers  and  farm  laborers  out  of  town.  A 
grocery  store  in  Greene,  near  Houston  street,  is  the  chief  retail  estab- 
lishment. The  sabots  are  asserted  to  be  quite  as  light  as  the  cheap 
horse-leather  brogans,  and  much  drier  and  more  comfortable  to  the 
feet,  as  well  as  more  durable. 

Public  letter-writers  are  quite  common  in  our  foreign  quarters* 
There  are  both  French  and  Germans  in  the  business.  They  write  let- 
ters for  anyone  who  desires  it,  and  furnish  translations  of  them  either 
in  English,  German  or  French ;  some  even  including  Italian  and 
Spanish.  The  usual  fee  is  25  cents,  and  they  say  they  are  generally 
kept  busy  enough. 

The  headquarters  of  a  public  letter-writer  is  usually  one  of  the 
small  general  shops  where  everything  from  shoe-strings  to  dragon 
kites  is  sold,  and  they  advertise  themselves  by  elaborately  engrossed 
pen-and-ink  signs  in  the  windows. 

The  early  stroller  in  the  foreign  quarters  will  meet  queer  old 
women  and  decripid  men,  who  flit  in  and  out  of  the  houses  in  the  dark 
hours  before  dawn,  like  birds  of  ill  omen  or  people  who  have  forgotten 
where  they  live. 

These  are  professors  of  perhaps  the  oddest  of  all  our  odd  busi- 
nesses. They  are  the  professional  callers.  Their  duty  is  to  wake 
people  up  who  have  to  go  to  work  at  exceptionally  early  hours.  For  a 
few  cents,  at  most  a  dime  a  week  from  each  client,  these  poor  creatures 
perform  their  task,  turning  night  into  day,  till  at  last  a  hand,  scarcely 
more  grisly  than  their  own,  knocks  at  their  own  door  and  summons 
them,  not  to  labor,  but  to  rest. 

There  are  musicians,  artists,  singers  and  the  like  who  make  & 
regular  business  of  performing  in  bar-rooms,  relying  on  the  contribn- 
tions  of  the  loungers  for  pay.  The  artists  are  either  those  who  draw 
soap  pictures  on  windows  or  mirrors  or  adepts  at  coarse  caricature^ 
Bohemians  and  vagabonds  who  for  a  dime  and  a  drink  dash  off  a  crude 
but  frequently  quite  striking  pencil-sketch  of  whoever  choses  to  pay 
him. 

A  one-eyed  young  man  of  Hebrew  extraction  is  the  most  skillful  of 


MYSTEB,Lj.6  of  new  YORK. 


9r 


these  artists.  He  was  at  one  time  employed  on  an  illustrated  paper, 
and  exhibited  considerable  promise,  but  drink  and  a  perverse  spirit 
secured  his  discharge,  and  he  drifted  into  this  method  of  gaining  a 
mimimum  of  living  and  a  maximum  of  liquor.  He  calls  a  dollar  and  a 
drink  a  good  day's  work,  and  rarely  makes  the  first. 

The  musicians  are  usually  of  a  somewhat  better  class,  morally. 
They  include  performers  on  the  zither  and  violin.  The  former  instru- 
ment seems  to  be  the  favorite  now.  The  bar-room  musicians  begin, 
their  rounds  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  and  end  up  in  late  bar- 
rooms where,  out  of  the  beery  good  nature  of  the  patrons,  they  reap 
their  richest  harvests. 

Most  of  them  drink  little,  support  families  out  of  their  earnings, 
which  at  the  best  of  times  do  not  average  more  than  one  dollar  and 
fifty  cents  a  day,  and  understand  very  little  music.  There  is  one  troupe 
of  very  pretty  young  girls  who  give  bar-room  performances  in  concert 
on  the  harp,  violin  and  cello,  and  do  very  well  indeed — financially. 

Bar-room  singers  and  jugglers  are  quite  common,  and  there  is  one 
young  fellow  who  goes  from  one  saloon  to  another  exhibiting  feats  of 
contortion.  Another  plays  on  the  mouth  organ,  giving  imitations  of 
various  instruments  and  rendering  difficult  airs  with  astonishing  truth 
and  beauty.  Yet  this  phenomenon  is  so  nearly  an  idiot  that  he  has  to- 
have  a  little  brother  with  him  to  keep  him  out  of  harm's  way. 

Up  to  a  few  months  ago  a  dapper  little  Italian  used  to  haunt  cer- 
tain beer  gardens  with  a  diminutive  performing  goat,  decked  out  with 
ribbons,  spangles  and  long  jingling  bells,  which  did  strange  feats  aa 
prettily  as  poor  Esmeralda's  favorite.  But  the  goat  died,  and  its  mas- 
ter has  gone  out  of  the  business. 

Street  jugglers  turn  up  every  now  and  then,  and  do  card  tricks  and 
other  feats  of  prestidigitation  on  the  sidewalk,  but  they  always  collect 
big  crowds,  and  the  policemen  constantly  disturb  them. 

Less  obnoxious  to  the  official  eye  is  the  man  who  tells  fortunes 
through  the  medium  of  birds.  He  has  a  cage,  in  which  are  a  couple  of 
poor,  bony  little  canaries,  and  a  tray  full  of  envelopes.  When  a  cus- 
tomer expresses  a  desire  to  have  his  or  her  fortune  told,  the  wizard 
spreads  the  envelopes  out  before  the  cage,  and  one  of  the  canaries  in- 
stantly pecks  out  a  missive.  This  contains  some  such  commonplace 
announcement  as  "good  fortune"  or  "bad  luck."    Professor  Logriena> 


38 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


the  well-known  bird  trainer  and  prestidigitator,  denounces  this  busi- 
ness as  a  burning  sliame.  The  birds,  he  says,  are  kept  on  the  verge  of 
starvation,  and  a  few  rape  seed  are  put  in  each  envelope.  Of  course 
the  little  feathered  martyrs  peck  at  it  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  food. 

Punch  and  Judy  shows  are  now  becoming  quite  familiar  features 
in  our  streets.  So  are  peep-shows  of  various  sorts,  principally  views 
of  strange  lands  and  historic  scenes.  One  enterprising  showman  got 
up  a  series  illustrating  the  Hull  murder.  An  Italian  now  exhibits  a 
yery  fair  marionette  theatre  on  the  up-town  streets  every  day.  In  the 
intervals,  -when  he  is  not  rusticating  on  the  Island,  Brown,  the  famous 
steamboat  man,  enlivens  the  streets  with  his  characteristic  whistling 
performances. 

Sandwich  men  are  getting  to  be  as  common  in  the  streets  of  New 
York  as  they  used  to  be  in  London.  Inserted  between  two  big  placards 
setting  forth  the  merits  of  some  cheap  eating  house,  or  advertising  bar- 
gains in  boots  or  dumb-bells,  they  creep  up  and  down  in  a  doleful  pro- 
cession, like  so  many  colossal  snails,  to  the  detriment  of  the  ribs  of  the 
passers-by.  The  oddest  of  the  sandwich  men  are  those  employed  by  a 
French  house  ^^ainter.  They  travel  about,  bearing  tin  signs,  on  which 
are  inscribed  a  sensational  story  of  the  murder  of  a  relative  in  Paris 
and  a  demand  for  justice,  ending,  however,  with  the  name  and  address 
of  the  painter,  and  an  invitation  to  the  reader  to  have  his  house  painted 
in  the  best  style.  Sandwich  men  earn  fifty  to  seventy-five  cents  a  day. 
Some  few  get  a  dollar,  but  they  are  aristocrats  in  the  profession  and  are 
exceptions  to  the  rule.  There  must  be  some  charm  or  fantastic  at- 
traction, like  that  the  stage  is  said  to  exercise,  in  the  business,  for  there 
are  men  in  it  who  have  stuck  to  it  for  several  years. 

Among  other  queer  businesses  must  be  mentioned  that  of  a  party 
in  Twenty-third  street,  who  practices  the  calling  of  moth  destroyer. 
By  virtue  of  a  compound  known  only  to  himself  he  annihilates  those 
little  foes  to  good  clothes  and  fine  furs.  He  practices  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  In  contradistinction  to  him  is  the  artist,  who,  on  Broadway, 
follows  the  calling  of  repairer  of  destroyed  china.  The  restoration  of 
valuable  damaged  books  is  another  curious  business.  It  is  carried  on 
to  great  perfection  in  England  and  France.  Here  there  are  a  few 
people  in  the  trade,  or  rather  art,  and  they  always  have  their  hands 
full  The  work  is  very  profitable  indeed,  as  is  also  that  of  expanding 
books  by  the  insertion  of  valuable  or  curious  engravings.  Somebiblio- 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK.  39 

maniacs  Lave  had  books  of  one  volume  swelled  to  thirty,  or  evex:  more, 
by  the  addition  of  pictures  illustrating  the  text.  Another  business 
which  has  proved  a  lucrative  one  is  that  of  selling  magical  instruments 
of  the  cheaper  sort,  and  instructing  the  buyers,  who  are  principally 
boys  and  youths,  in  their  use.  One  tradesman  in  this  line  on  the 
Bowery  is  never  idle. 

The  bouquet  business  has  undergone  a  great  change  within  the 
last  couple  of  years.  Formerly  the  venders  used  to  buy  the  flowers 
themselves  and  make  them  into  bunches.  Some,  who  have  capital,  do 
•so  to-day.  But  the  great  majority  of  them  are  only  peddlers  for  flower- 
dealers,  who  make  the  bouquets  by  wholesale  and  employ  anyone 
whom  they  can  trust  to  hawk  them.  They  allow  the  vender  a  cent  on 
every  five  cent  bouquet  sold  and  three  cents  on  every  ten  cent  one. 
Certain  east  side  streets  are  fairly  lined  with  these  floral  "speculators' 
shops. 

It  would  require  a  whole  book  to  review  the  army  of  ragpickers, 
-cigar-stump  collectors,  organ  grinders,  itinerant  cobblers,  clothes 
menders  and  cutters  (for  there  are  men  who  go  from  house  to  house 
cutting  the  cloth  which  thrifty  housewives  make  into  clothing  for  their 
numerous  families)  and  the  like,  all  of  whom  help  to  swell  the  tide  of 
life  in  the  metropolis  and  gain  a  livelihood,  commonly  meagre  enough, 
by  trades  which  people  hardly  know  exist. 

There  is  one  figure  among  the  lot,  however,  which  calls  for  more 
-extended  comment.  It  is  that  of  the  accommodating  gentleman  who 
has  come  to  be  known  as  the  "time  peddler."  Not  that  he  peddles 
clocks,  but  that  he  knows  the  value  of  time,  and  don't  object  to  con- 
suming some  of  it  for  the  benefit  of  his  customers. 

There  are  quite  a  number  of  time  peddlers  in  New  Tork,  and  they 
are  most  useful  members  of  the  community.  They  are  all  Hebrews,  and 
sell  everything  on  the  installment  plan.  If  your  wife  wants  a  silk  dress 
she  can  obtain  the  material  from  the  time  peddler,  paying  a  few  dollars 
down  and  the  rest  in  stated  installments.  Hats,  shoes,  underclothing, 
linen,  everything  a  woman  needs,  in  short,  are  supplied  by  him.  He 
will  contract  to  furnish  the  husband  as  well  as  the  wife,  too,  even  to  the 
extent  of  an  overcoat  or  a  suit  of  clothes.  In  this  case  the  customer  is 
sent  to  some  tailor,  who  measures  and  supplies  him  with  the  required 
garments,  sending  the  bill  to  the  peddler.  The  latter  pays  it,  and  pre- 
sents his  bill  to  the  customer,  with  an  addition  of  from  twenty-five  to  ' 


40 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


fifty  per  cent  for  the  accommodation.  Nothing  comes  amiss  to  the 
tinio  peddler,  from  a  paper  of  pins  to  a  piano.  He  will  supply  them 
all,  but  at  nearly  if  not  quite  double  the  price  one  would  have  ti>  pay  if 
the  transaction  had  been  conducted  on  a  cash  basis. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  MOONLIGHT  PICNIC. 

Sketchley  and  I  have  just  been  promoting  the  success  of  the 
eleventh  annual  moonlight  picnic  of  the  Blush  Rose  Social  Club — an 
influential  political  society  organization  of  the  Sixth  Ward — at 
Schweitzerkase's  Grove,  and  if  my  physical  condition  is  a  sign  we  had 
a  high  old  time  of  it.  It  took  me  an  hour  to  deliberate  this  morning  on 
whether  I  should  tie  a  sheet  around  my  head  or  wear  the  ash  barrel 
out  to  get  my  usual  ante  prandial  soda  and  lemon,  and  I  compromised 
by  sending  Mary  Ellen  for  it  in  a  tin  pail.  If  I  am  any  judge  of  black 
eyes  of  the  artificial  order  Mary  Ellen  had  been  to  a  moonlight  picnic, 
too.  She  was  bracing  up  on  Florida  water  out  of  young  Bluffy's  bottle 
in  the  hall  cupboard  when  I  called  her.  She  said  it  was  to  "  rejuice 
the  inflammation,  sor."  If  the  effect  in  question  is  at  all  like  that 
which  the  process  of  producing  it  had  on  the  contents  of  BJnjfy's  per- 
fume flask  there  won't  be  any  inflammation  at  all  left. 

The  moonlight  picnic,  as  you  may  therefore  infer  if  you  don't  know 
it  already,  is  an  institution  of  the  liveliest  description. 

You  always  go  to  it  in  a  barge  with  a  bar  on  board  and  a  little, 
asthmatic  steamer  hauling  it  along  at  the  end  of  a  hawser,  for  all  the 
world  like  a  small  boy  lugging  a  liberal  thirty  cents'  worth  of  midsum- 
mer dog  to  the  pound.  The  bar  and  the  band  are  the  best  bowers  of 
the  moonlight  picnic  management.  The  former  is  situated  on  the  lower 
and  the  latter  on  the  upper  deck,  for  the  barges  are  two  stories  high. 
Tliis  division  is  necessary,  for  no  bottles  were  ever  blown  that  could 
stand  a  half  hour's  serenade  by  an  excursion  band.  The  notes  come 
flying  out  of  the  tubes  like  shrapnel  and  grape  from  a  field  battery. 
The  instruments  are  generally  brass,  but  they  ought  to  be  boiler  iron 
for  the  strain  they  have  to  stand.  Some  day,  when  the  explosion  of  a 
French  horn  or  the  bursting  of  a  trombone  strews  the  deck  with  man- 


MYiiTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


41 


gled  doad  and  dying,  the  public  will  awake  to  a  tardy  realization  of  this 
necessary  reform. 

There  was  a  Saxe  horn  at  the  Blush  Rose  picnic,  fo^  instance,  that 
I  will  back  against  the  boiler  of  any  excursion  steamer  in  New  York 
harbor  for  condensed  destructiveness,  and  I'll  take  my  affidavit  that 
nothing  but  the  fact  that  the  performer  was  too  drunk  to  do  his  instru- 
ment justice  prevented  what  the  Herald  would  call  "  Another  Holo- 
caust.'* 

Still  the  band  makes  music  enough  along  with  the  noise  to  dance 
by,  providing  one  is  not  too  particular,  and  the  picnickers  take  advan- 
tage of  it.  They  are  not  fools  enough  to  kick  at  the  quality  as  long  as 
there  is  quantity  enough  to  keep  their  heels  and  toes  busy  more  agree- 
ably. 

In  our  case  we  began  within  ten  minutes  after  we  had  left  the  dock^ 
and  would  no  doubt  have  commenced  sooner  only  the  committee  of  ar- 
rangements were  afraid  of  being  held  responsible  for  the  destruction  of 
window  glass  in  the  city,  and  waited  till  we  got  out  of  range. 

The  dance  on  an  excursion  barge  opens  with  much  ceremony. 

The  gentlemen  bow,  the  ladies  curtsey  as  they  accept  an  invitation 
or  don't,  and  everything  is  as  formal  almost  as  it  would  be  in  a  ball- 
room ashore  ;  but  it  don't  last.  It  is  fun,  not  etiquette,  the  moonlight 
picknicker  is  after,  and  if  he  don't  get  it  it  isn't  his  fault. 

Within  an  hour  the  girls  have  their  wraps  off  and  the  men  are  in 
their  shirt  sleeve.^. 

At  the  end  of  another  you  no  longer  invite  your  partner,  but  snatch 
the  first  lady  you  fancy  from  her  seat  and  whirl  her  off  into  the  gay 
and  melting  round. 

The  third  hour  brings  with  it  the  privilege  of  exchanging  partners 
on  the  floor,  if  they  will  let  you,  and  doing  pretty  much  whatever  you 
please,  from  dancin;^  in  your  bare  feet  to  tripping  the  fat  girl  with  the 
green  hat  up,  and  then  telling  her  that  there  has  been  a  big  fall  in 
lard.  This  style  of  witicism  is  always  very  much  relished  at  a  moonlight 
picnic  by  everybody  but  the  person  it  is  applied  to — that  is,  and  by  the 
time  you  get  off  a  few  specimens  you  will  be  gratified  to  hear  the  girls 
you  haven't  been  guying  saying  to  one  another : 

**He's  a  real  funny  fellow,  isn't  he?    And  so  good  natured.*' 

All  around  the  railing  of  the  upper  deck  flirting  parties  hem  the 
danoers  in. 


42 


MYSTEBIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


The  flirtations  of  the  moonlight  excursion  are,  like  its  dancing  and 
its  music,  more  vigorous  than  aesthetic.  Sketchley,  who  has  been  quite 
melancholy  since  Jessica  started  for  Europe,  brightened  up  to  the  ex- 
tent of  getting  gone  on  a  pert  little  beauty  with  copper-tinted  hair  and 
eyes  as  black  as  coal  and  as  brilliant  as  electric  lights. 
^  "  She  looks  so  refined  in  this  coarse  crowd,"  he  said.    '*  By  George  f 

I've  a  notion  to  make  up  to  her." 

It  took  him  half  an  hour  to  arrive  at  this  notion,  and  when  he  went 
to  fulfill  it  he  found  Black  Eyes  on  the  flirtation  bench,  with  her  pant- 
ing throat  bare  and  a  young  fellow  with  cropped  head  and  a  long  red 
neck  fanning  her  with  his  hat. 

As  our  friend  sidled  up  the  object  of  his  adoration  said  to  her  com- 
panion : 

"Jimmy!" 

"Kitty!" 

"Go's  'ittle  dam  fool  is  'oo?" 
"Why,  'oors,  Dod  dam!" 

Sketchley  didn't  wait  for  them  to  finish  kissing. 

"It's  too  infernal  hot  to  kiss  anyhow,"  he  said.  "For  the  Lord's 
•sake,  don't  bother  me." 

And  he  commenced  caricaturing  the  young  man  with  the  red  neck, 
stabbing  the  paper  as  if  his  pencil  had  been  a  knife. 

When  ycu  are  not  flirting  or  dancing  you  are  at  the  bar,  renewing 
your  backbone  with  beer  and  hard  boiled  eggs  against  the  next  turn. 
This  is  as  much  a  sacred  duty  on  your  part  toward  the  committee  as  it 
is  to  yourself.  The  eggs  and  beer  were  brought  on  board  to  be  con- 
sumed, and  they  have  got  to  be  before  you  go  home,  so  you  might  as 
well  commence  as  soon  as  you  can. 

Sometimes  the  excursion  has  no  definite  destination,  but  just  goes 
sailing  around,  dancing,  eating  and  drinking  till  there  is  nothing  more 
on  board  the  barge  to  sell  and  the  farmers  on  shore  have  organized  a 
vigilance  committee  and  are  looking  for  boats. 

When,  as  in  our  case,  it  goes  to  some  grove  it  gets  there  about  the 
time  that  the  excursionists  are  too  exhausted  to  dance  any  more,  so 
they  pair  off  and  go  ashore  to  brace  up. 

The  crew  of  the  tug  utilize  this  opportunity  to  board  the  barge 
and  get  drunk,  and  they  have  finished  thrashing  the  bartenders  and 
gone  off  without  settling,  when  the  excursionists  come  trooping  back 


# 


I 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


43 


squabbling  or  cracking  jokes,  and  the  bartenders  put  brown  paper  on 
their  wounds  aud  get  ready  to  make  the  new  arrivals  pay  the  bill  the 
tug  folks  didn't. 

The  band,  meantime,  has  been  reviving  its  wind  with  a  keg  of  beor, 
and  is  as  ready  for  action  as  it  ever  was.  There  is  something  marvel- 
ous in  the  amount  of  muscular  energy  a  sheet  iron  band  will  develop 
over  a  single  keg  of  beer.  It  reminds  one  of  the  reply  of  the  Irishman 
who,  when  asked  whether  he  played  the  violin  by  note  or  by  ear,  an- 
swered : 

"  By  main  stringth,  be  Jabers  !" 

It  takes  longer  to  get  started  on  the  return  trip  than  the  voyage 
out,  principally  because  the  crew  of  the  tug  are  all  sleeping  their  drunk 
off,  and  the  captain  has  to  go  around  with  a  locust  club  and  argue  with 
them ;  but  however  great  the  delay  may  be  there  are  sure  to  be  some 
people  left  behind. 

In  our  case  it  was  Black  Eyes  and  Bed  Neck,  and  they  came  down 
the  wharf  just  as  we  drifted  out  into  the  stream. 

"Good  bye!"  shouts  somebody. 

"Tra-la-la!"  yells  another. 

"Why  don't  you  swim  off?"  calls  a  third. 

This  suggestion  evidently  suits  Black  Eyes  to  a  dot  Before  the 
words  are  spoken  almost  she  is  in  the  water,  and  in  a  couple  of  minutes 
more  stands  with  her  wet  bunting  dress  clinging  to  her  shapely  form  on 
the  barge's  deck,  while  Bed  Neck  from  the  e:_d  of  the  wharf  fires  words 
which  rival  the  efforts  of  the  band  at  his  departing  love. 

"  Ain't  I  the  daisy  just  ?"  she  says  to  Sketchley,  with  his  pencil 
busy.  "Mind  you  give  me  a  square  deal  now,  or  I'll  get  Jim  to  slug 
you  as  soon  as  he  tramps  it  back  to  town.  He's  a  regular  goat ;  he 
hates  the  water  so."  « 

And  she  shakes  the  spray  from  her  tumbled  hair,  which  glows  like 
spun  gold  in  the  lamplight,  raining  a  shower  of  liquid  diamonds  on  all 
about,  while  her  eyes  flash  the  brightest  and  the  color  flushes  hex 
cheeks  under  the  soft  skin  like  the  deep  blush  on  a  ripe  peach. 

The  boat  takes  its  time  towing  us  back,  but  nobody  bothers  about 
it.  We  sit  with  our  heels  on  the  railing  now  and  drink  beer  without 
counting  the  glasses.  A  one-3yed  gentleman  from  the  Fourth  Ward 
developed  a  co  nic  talent  an  l  sings  songs  which  nobody  listens  to,  ao- 
companied  by  hideous  facial  contortions  suppositiously  expressive  o£ 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


intense  and  varied  emotions.  When  he  finishes  the  girls  all  applaud 
vildlj  and  lauph  till  they  cry.  Then  some  one  suggests  a  can-can,  and 
fthe  proposition  received  with  rapture.  The  band  brisks  up  and  the 
moon,  peeping  under  the  roof  of  the  open  Jeck  as  if  it  was  ashamed  to 
loolv ,  sees  a  picnic  version  of  the  dance  of  the  mabille.  We  have  more 
"beer  and  more  singing.  A  young  lady  in  scarlet  velvet  does  a  clog  ;  she 
has  just  learned  preparatory  to  blazing  on  the  public  from  the  variety 
stage.  A  couple  of  rollicking  would-be  variety  actors,  having  provided 
tb-emselves  with  masquerading  garments,  don  them,  and  give  the  com- 
pany a  sample  of  ih^ir  talent.  This  excites  a  spirit  of  emulation  in 
other  young  ladies,  r  id  they  exhibit  various  kindred  acquirements.  We 
are  so  interested  that  we  do  not  notice  that  the  barge  has  ceased 
to  progress  until  some  one  sees  our  tug  steaming  swiftly  down  the 
river. 

"  The  line  parted,"  says  a  committee  man,  coolly,  "  and  they  hadn't 
no  other  one,  so  they  went  on  to  New  York." 
"  And  weVe  got  to  lay  here  all  night  ?" 
"It  looks  so." 

"  But  what  the  devil  are  we  to  do  ?" 

"Well,  I  don't  see  much.  The  beer's  all  out,  but  there's  twenty 
dozen  of  champagne  /^i,  and  I  'spose  you  can  manage  to  worry  along 
on  that  till  morning.* 

Which  may  explain  why  my  hat  wouldn't  fit  this  morning,  for  by 
the  time  we  took  ambulances  to  our  various  homes  there  wasn't  enough 
of  anything  but  water  left  on  the  E  Plurihus  Unum  to  moisten  the  bot- 
tom of  an  Italian's  tomato  can. 

The  Blush  Rose  Moonlight  Picnic  was  therefore  an  eminent  SXLO* 


CHAPTEE  VI 

PHOTOGEAPEIC  BEAUTIEa. 

When  I  hadn't  the  least  idea  of  ever  becoming  an  artist  with  ths 
pen  at  all  I  remember  my  dear  mothor  onco  yanking  me  out  of  bed  by 
tlie  ear  early  on  a  roasting  hot  morning,  scouring  m3  with  soap  and  a 
liair  brush  till  I  might  have  been  taken  for  a  boiled  lobster — if  the 
other  party  had  been  drunk  enough — slamming  me  into  a  brand  new 


MYSTERIES    OF  NEW  YORK, 


4:5 


suit  of  clotlies,  with  a  sliirt  that  was  starched  till  I  felt  as  if  I  was  in 
my  coffin,  and  a  collar  that  drew  blood  every  time  my  tender  hide 
touched  its  edge,  and  then  hauling  me  to  a  photographic  gallery  to  have 
a  picture  taken  for  my  uncle  in  China,  from  whom  I  had  expecta- 
tions. 

In  those  days  when  you  wanted  to  have  your  picture  taken  you 
went  or  were  taken  and  had  it  taken  by  a  man  who  was  too  glad  of  a 
job  to  put  on  any  airs  and  that  was  the  end  of  it. 

But  Y>'e  don*t  do  it  that  way  nowadays — not  in  New  York,  at 
leasi 

In  the  first  place,  you  drop  into  one  of  our  photographers  some- 
where around  Union  Square,  probably,  as  mine  is,  to  book  yourself  for 
a  sitting. 

You  did  it  in  the  swell  reception  room,  with  screens,  tapestry, 
trophies  of  old  arms  and  pictures,  and  you  do  it  through  the  medium  of 
a  most  fascinating  young  female  in  the  gayest  of  summer  toilets,  who 
presides  behind  an  elaborate  walnut  desk,  over  an  immense  register  of 
names,  and  asks  in  a  business  tone,  tempered  by  natural  sweetness^ 
unless  you  happen  to  be  one  of  her  own  sex : 

"Name,  please  ?" 

"  Mr.  O.  Ik>under." 

It  goes  down  in  a  neat  little  hand,  and  there  is  a  brief  calcula^ 

tion. 

"You  stand  number  ninety-nine,  Mr.  Rounder." 
"And  when  do  I  come  in?" 

More  calculation,  assisted  by  rubbing  of  penholder. 
"  Let  me  see.    Twenty-eight  is  down  for  this  afternoon.    I  guess  it 
will  be  at  1  o'clock  day  after  to-morrow." 
"  What  can  I  do  for  you,  madame  ?" 

You  give  place  to  a  swell  dowager,  who  makes  number  one  hun- 
dred and  a  deal  of  fuss  about  being  so  high  up,  too,  and  amuse  your- 
self by  a  look  about  you.  There  are  plenty  of  things  to  look  at,  but 
those  that  chiefly  interest  you  are  the  pictures  of  the  peoj^lo  Avho  Lave 
had  the  bulge  on  you  in  a  photographic  way.  You  find  thorn  iu  elab- 
orate frames  on  the  walls  and  in  plethoric  albums  on  the  table.  They 
fill  obese  portfolios  and  fat  fancy  boxes.  And  there  are  a  couple  of 
young  persons  in  big  white  aprons  gumming  them  to  cards  in  one 
oomer  witli  paste  which  smells  aristocratically  of  the  perfume. 


46  MYSTERIES    OF  NEW  yoiiK. 

There  are  any  number  of  people  beside  yourse/i  xnaLing  tlie  same 
use  of  their  eyes.  Some  have  come  on  the  same  errand  as  ^'ourself* 
others  are  waiting  for  their  turn  to  take  a-dvajitage  of  previous  appoint-^ 
ments.  The  crowd  is  a  shifting  one,  what  with,  departures  and  arri- 
vals. 

You  notice  several  things  abou^  it  at  once. 

The  chief  is,  that  it  is  composed  of  the  fair  sex,  with  only  a  sprink- 
ling of  young  men,  who  seem  to  have  had  appointments  with  the  ladies 
they  are  talking  to. 

The  second  is,  that  if  dress  goes  for  anything  it  is  the  Inmtummest 
of  upper-crustness  personified. 

But  most  of  all  that  strikes  you  is  the  power  of  criticism  the  ladies 
develop.  What  an  Irishman  would  call  their  knowledgability  in  art  is 
simply  immense. 

And  unrestricted  by  the  conventionality  of  the  drawing  room  it  is 
equally  piquant. 

**Upon  my  v^ord,  dear,  here  is  Florry  Honiton,  with  her  neck  bare» 
too  !" 

"  And  those  arms  I" 
"  I  beg  pardon !" 
"Arms,  I  said." 

"  Thanks !  I  was  speculating  as  to  what  they  were.  I  don'i 
voTider  she  wears  trains  if  they  match." 

"  They're  not  nearly  as  bad  as  Hortense  Yanderveie's,  and  here 
she  is  in  a  page's  suit" 

*'  It's  anything  but  a  suit  for  her." 

"The  only  approach  to  a  match  about  it  are  her — ^ 

A  buzzing  group  quite  fills  a  little  alcove  at  one  end  of  the  room. 
It  is  a  picture  in  the  alcovo,  i  n  immense  photograph,  retouched  with 
charcoal,  a  Yenus,  redolent  of  the  lush  life  of  the  crooked,  stretched 
on  a  bank  of  daisies. 

"And  they  say  she  was  the  mistress  of  a  king." 

"Yes.    The  King  of  Westphalia." 

"  I  might  have  guessed  it.    Ham  is  so  fattening." 

Y"ou  hear  a  great  deal  more  of  t 'nis  cast  off-light  of  love  of  a  pretty 
sovereign,  and  you  hear  no  good  of  her,  of  course.  But  there  are  two 
points  you  can  discount  at  the  start. 

One  is  that  when  you  hear  her  blackguarded  for  permitting  young 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK.  €T 

Scattercash  of  the  Union  to  squander  liis  hundred  thousand  a  year  on 
her  and  even  cut  into  the  future  hundreds  of  thousands  there  isn't  one 
of  the  ladies  whose  virtue  this  unprincipled  proceeding  shocks  who 
wouldn't  change  places  with  her  and  pay  for  her  own  wedding  ring, 
too. 

The  other,  that  not  one  of  her  fair  assassins  would  miss  a  night 
when  .she  sings,  not  if  it  cost  her  every  other  opera  of  the  season. 

"  Ze  laugh  is  viz  ze  vinner,  though,"  the  Grasshopper,  as  Bohemia 
had  christened  her,  once  said  over  her  maccaroni  at  Morettis,  where  she 
overheard  herself  being  torn  to  pieces  by  a  couple  of  neighbors.  "  How 
dull  zis  life  would  be  if  one  was  always  speak  veil  of,  and  beside,  mon 
ami,  ze  pictures  sell  like  vat  you  call  ze  hot  cakes.  Zere  is  not  one  of 
zose  ladies  who  does  not  buy  herself  one,  she  hate  me  so." 

Which  proves  that  the  Grasshopper's  philosophy  is  sounder  than 
her  morality,  and  that  there's  more  good  in  a  bad  name  than  people 
generally  look  for. 

A  dashing  blonde,  in  a  dazzlingly  new  costume  from  feathers  to 
French  boots,  sweeps  up  to  the  counter.  Even  if  you  did  not  reC3r* 
nize  the  original  of  the  familiar  face  which  stares  at  you  in  every  album 
and  out  of  every  shop  window,  that  Bohemian  case  of  address  would 
tell  you  that  it  was  learned  nowhere  but  behind  the  footlights.  An 
aristocratically  scorbutic  young  man,  with  the  fuzz  on  his  cheeks 
almost  enough  developed  to  be  dyed  into  visibility,  takes  off  his  hat  to 
her  with  a  flourish,  and  then  turns  very  red  and  whispers  apologetically 
to  the  lady  with  him  : 

"  It's  Somer — Miss  Somerville,  I  mean ;  met  her — on — tother  night 
at  the  opera,  you  know.  Dooced  pleasant  gyurl  for  an  actress.  Pic- 
tures sell  immensely,  and  she  gets  twenty  dollars  on  every  thou- 
sand." 

"How  are  the  sales  going?"  asks  the  subject  of  this  lucid  explana- 
tion. 

"Three  thousand,  three  hun — " 

"O  bother  the  odd  numbers.  They  won't  run  away  'till  next 
time." 

There  is  a  little  whispered  confab,  the  scratching  of  a  pen  in  a  re- 
ceipt book,  and  the  blonde  sucks  an  inky  finger  while  the  fascinating 
young  female  counts  some  bills  over  for  the  fourth  time,  and  takes  as 
long  as  she  can  at  it.    Somerville  don't  count  them  at  all.    When  sho 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


does  get  them,  "I'm  afraid  another  handling  wouldn't  leave  anything 
but  rags,"  she  says  as  she  slips  them  into  her  glove. 

The  fascinating  young  female  avenges  the  sarcasm  by  giving  one  of 
the  girls  in  the  corner  a  blowing  up  for  mounting  a  picture  the  hun- 
dredth part  of  an  inch  too  low,  and  the  departed  blonde  goes  through 
the  mill  and  comes  out  pretty  nearly  as  badly  used  up  as  the  Grass- 
hopper. In  fact,  her  critics  know  less  good  of  her.  She  hasn't  any 
royal  names  on  her  visiting  list.  So  the  same  tongues  which  started 
the  Westphalian  monarch's  squeezed  orange  for  a  shameless  adven- 
turess take  their  little  dig  at  the  other  because  she  is  "common."  Tlie 
only  way  to  do  things,  after  all,  is  not  to  do  them  by  halves. 

A  fresh  arrival  dams  the  stream  of  gossip  and  turns  the  current  in 
another  channel.  It  is  a  superb  brunette,  who  is  followed  by  a  liveried 
man  Avith  a  valise.  She  passes  through  the  room  and  vanishes  into 
another,  followed  by  the  henchman. 

"  Mrs.  Munnybagg,  upon  my  word !" 

"  Of  course,  I  thought  you  knew  it." 

"  She's  being  photoed  in  costume." 

"  Certainly,  and  being  paid  for  it,  too.'* 

"  I  don't  see  what  there  is  about  her  to  be  worth  a  price  for 
posing." 

'*  They  say  she  was  the  model  for  Chrisseller's  Yenus." 
"  I  always  thought  he  had  an  immense  imagination,  and  now  I 
know  it." 

The  flunkey  comes  out  without  the  valise.  Some  one  observes  sar- 
castically that  old  Munnybagg  keeps  his  wife  so  short  that  she  has  to 
pose  to  a  photographer  to  get  money  enough  to  pay  her  valet. 

"  She  would  be  a  deal  better  off  if  they  were  not  married.  They 
say  he's  as  liberal  as  a  prince  away  from  home." 

"  He  has  need  to  be.    It's  his  only  recommendation." 

The  entrance  of  a  dapper  old  gentleman  with  very  shaky  legs  cuts 
the  thread  of  scandal  again.  He  has  with  him  a  very  young  lady,  with 
bleached  hair  and  a  saucy  face  and  sharp,  black  eyes,  which  take  the 
room  iu  defiantly.  Her  escort  whispers  something  which  makes  her 
laugh,  rather  louder  than  is  absolutely  necessary.  He  nods  familiarly 
to  the  register  lady,  and  says  : 

*'We  are  on  time,  you  see." 

"To  the  minute,  Mr.  Munnybagg." 


NIGHT   AND  MORNING- 

(From  "JVeic  Fork  by  Ikiy  and  NighV  ) 


MYSTERIES  OF  NEW  YORK, 


49 


**  Now  then,  mj  pet." 

They  go  through  tha  back  door,  and  the  crowd  breaks  out 
again. 

"  Talk  of  the,  you  know  whom,  eh  ?" 
'*The  old  reprobate!" 

"  The  idea  of  that,  Amaranth !  A  shameless  chit  fr->iB  a  second 
rate  burlesque  troupe." 

**  But  if  Mrs.  M.  should  only  see  them  P 

In  point  of  fact,  if  l^Irs.  M.  stands  for  Mrs.  Mmmybagg,  she  has ; 
for  the  door  flies  open,  and  that  lady,  in  an  entrancing  deshabille,  with 
a  lace  shawl  thrown  over  her  head  only  half  veiling  a  liberal  bust,  ap- 
pears. 

"  What  is  this.  Miss  Blank  ?"  she  calls  sharply,  with  the  nut-cracker 
face  grinning  over  her  shoulder  like  a  chimpanze's. 

"What,  Mrs.  Munnybagg?"  queries  Miss  Blank,  scarcely  looking 
Up  from  her  ledger.  It  is  her  way  of  crushing  her  audacious  sex  to 
never  take  any  interest  in  them. 

"What  is  Mr.  Munnybagg  doing  with  this — ^this — this — ^ 

"  They  came  by  appointment,  madam." 

"  And  what  the  deuce  is  Mrs.  Munnybagg  doing  here  if  it  comes  to 
that?" 

"  She  came  by  appointment,  too,  Mr.  Munnybagg." 
This  with  a  gracious  smile  that  makes  Mrs.  M.  turn  erimson  with 
fury  and  almost  foam  at  the  mouth, 

"There,  by  Jove!    Madam,  we're  even." 

The  door  closes,  and  the  rest  of  the  warfare  of  the  Munnybaggs 
and  the  anathemas  only  reach  us  in  a  vague  murmur. 

The  circumstances  that  bring  the  wife  and  the  mistress  of  this 
senile  libertine  upon  the  same  pictorial  level  are  curious  ones. 

Or,  rather,  they  were  until  the  fashion  had  become  too  common  to 
be  curious  any  more. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  posing  for  photographs  in  costume  was 
a  special  privilege  of  the  actress,  or  at  most  the  courtesan  after  a  masked 
ball  or  a  spree.  But  it  wasn't  long  before  some  society  beauty  got  it 
into  her  head  that  she'd  look  quite  as  well  in  tights  and  a  plumed  hat 
as  Miss  So-and-so,  of  the  Grand  Calcium,  and  she  tried  it.  The  ice 
being  thus  cracked  it  was  soon  completely  broken.  Half  of  the  fancy 
photographs  exposed  for  sale  to-day,  with  all  the  picturesque  make-up 


50 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


of  a  footliglit  queen,  are  those  of  people  who  know  no  more  of  the  stage 
than  one  learns  from  the  front  of  the  house. 

In  fact,  some  of  the  very  fanciest  are  of  this  sort,  and  what  is  more, 
the  originals  are  more  exacting  on  the  score  of  their  percentage  than 
any  professional  poseicse. 

"  That  lady,"  observed  my  friend  Coxiodion  one  day,  pointing  to  a 
picture  in  my  hand,  figures  her  interest  down  to  the  fraction  of  a 
cent,  and  fights  like  a  wildcat  for  the  odd  half  if  there  is  one.  Yet  she 
is  the  wife  of  a  man  worth  $50,000  a  year  and  lives  in  a  palace  on  the 
avenue.  That  little  girl  there  is  another  avenue  belle,  but  she  shines 
at  the  south  end.  She's  on  the  ballet  at  Niblo's,  and  is  as  poor  as  the 
poorest  church  mouse  ever  dared  to  be  and  not  stj-rve.  Yet  I've  never 
liad  a  dispute  with  her  about  her  percentages.  It  isn't  in  her.  She's 
too  poor  to  be  mean  and  for  me  to  be  mean  with  her  either." 

The  percentages  paid  on  photographs  to  the  originals  are  from  $15 
to  $50  a  thousand.  Some  of  the  highest  are  paid  to  the  wife  of  a  Brook- 
lyn clergyman,  who  has  posed  over  two  hundred  times,  and  never  once 
in  the  habiliments  of  her  own  sex — frequently  in  none  of  any  gender. 
In  fact,  until  the  Grasshopper  concluded  to  give  life  to  the  role  she  was 
the  only  photographic  aphrodite  in  New  York,  except,  of  course,  those 
shameful  pictures  of  whom  she  cannot  speak  without  a  shudder.  Fancy 
this  woman,  in  t!ie  swell  church  her  husband  presides  over,  listening  to 
the  moral  lessons  with  due  discreet  attention,  while  her  pictured  self, 
purchased  for  so  many  dimes  with  a  share  to  herself,  serves  to  fire  the 
passions  of  some  hlase  debauchee,  and  forms  one  of  the  vile  decorations 
of  a  bagnio  parlor. 

But  all  the  poseiises  don't  rely  on  the  photographer  and  the  open 
market  alone  for  the  disposal  of  their  counterfeited  charms.  I  dropped 
to  a  neat  little  dodge  in  the  course  of  a  call  the  other  day.  It  was  a 
call  on  a  couple  of  young  ladies  at  a  "  bang-up"  architectural  ornament 
of  E-eservoir  Park.  I  noticed  on  the  table  some  photographs  of  my 
hostesses  in  a  most  charming  though  unconventional  costume,  and 
remarked:     "Private  theatricals,  eh?" 

"Oh,  no!  We  were  at  Albumen's  the  other  day,  and  he  got  us  to 
pose  in  a  couple  of  costumes  he  had  there.  We  were  getting  up  a 
benefit  subscription  for  the  Hugmegug  Asylum  for  Inebriates'  Orphans, 
so  we  had  a  lot  printed  and  are  selling  them  for  the  good  of  the  sub- 
scription box." 


MYSTERIES   OF  27EW  YORK. 


51 


Of  course,  I  couldn't  help  adding  my  mite  to  the  store  hidden  in 
in  the  pretty  paper-mache  and  blue  satin  box  on  the  centre  table.  I 
forgot  my  cane,  and  walked  back  a  block  io  get  it.  My  hostesses  were 
talking  when  I  passed  the  parlor  doors. 

*'  Only  two  dollars  !  The  stingy  fellow !  I  made  sure  it  would  be 
enough  for  that  ribbon,  but  you  never  can  depend  on  these  men  about 
town." 


CHAPTEE  YH. 

METEOPOLITAN  MOONSHINERS. 

The  majority  of  our  citizens — that  solid,  respectable  class  who 
have  great  respect  for  the  majesty  of  the  law — are  under  the  impression 
the  business  of  "  moonshining"  or  distilling  spirituous  liquors  illicitly 
is  confined  to  the  mountain  fastnesses  of  Georgia. 

Such  is  not  the  case,  however,  not  by  the  largest  majority  that  that 
particular  State  ever  gave  for  the  democratic  ticket,  and  the  way  the 
Georgia  "  crackers"  can  whoop  up  votes  is  something  remarkable. 

Right  in  New  York  city  the  work  of  defrauding  the  United  States 
Government  by  utterly  ignoring  the  existence  of  such  an  institution  as 
the  Revenue  Department  while  making  whisky  ig  carried  on  to  a  con- 
siderable extent.  I  cannot  say  how  many  stills  there  are  in  operation, 
because  I  have  possessed  no  means  of  getting  at  the  facts,  but  both 
your  artist  and  myself  can  swear  to  the  existence  of  one.  We  have 
been  there,  have  drunken  of  the  whisky  and  can  safely  pronounce  it 
good. 

There  is  no  desire  on  our  part  to  aid  and  abet  individuals  in  their 
attempts  to  swindle  the  United  States  Government,  but  we  were  after 
the  romantic  and  picturesque  only,  and  drank  the  liquor  merely  because 
it  was  good  to  drink.  I,  for  one,  shall  not  let  my  conscience  trouble  me 
to  any  appreciable  degree. 

Now  for  the  "  still."  It  is  at  the  upper  end  of  the  island,  where 
New  York  revels  in  rocks,  ravines,  narrow  lanes,  bits  of  wooded  land, 
and  then  again  vast  stretches  of  meadow.  The  house  is  back  oS.  the 
main  road  and  is  an  honest,  licensed  beer  saloon,  with  its  short  coun- 
ter, swathed  keg,  its  sanded  floor  and  one  or  two  tables.    It  was  about 


52 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


fifteen  minutes  past  eleven  o'clock  on  a  stormy  evening  tliat  our  repre- 
sentatives walked  up  the  muddy  steps  of  a  liouse,  a  gleam  of  light  from 
the  interior  showing  that  w^  were  not  too  late,  opened  the  door  and 
stalked  in. 

The  sole  occupant  was  a  very  pretty  German  girl,  I  should  say  she 
was  nineteen  years  old,  who  was  counting  the  money  from  the  till  by 
moans  of  a  candle.  She  looked  at  us  hurriedly,  and  with  anything  but 
pleasure  in  the  glance.  Then  she  reached  up  to  where  a  bell-cord  dan- 
gled and  pulled  it  vigorously.    This  done,  she  turned  and  said : 

"What  do  you  wish?  There  is  no  more  beer,  we  are  about  to 
close." 

As  she  spoke  she  came  around  in  front  of  the  bar  and  locked  the 
door.    I  noticed  then  what  a  splendidly  constructed  animal  she  was. 

We  were  prisoners  to  a  dead  certainty. 

"  Wo  want  to  see  your  father,"  I  answered. 

"  And  what  (\p  you  want  with  her  father  ?"  came  in  a  growling  tone 
from  some  one  back  of  me.  I  was  undeniably  startled,  and  upon  turn- 
ing was  far  from  being  reassured  by  discovering  a  powerful,  tall  man, 
with  black  beard  and  hair,  who  wore  a  genuine  buccaneer's  appearance 
generally. 

We  both  stood  up,  but  before  I  had  time  to  explain  our  position  it 
was  rendered  still  more  interesting  by  the  arrival  upon  the  scene  of  the 
wife  and  mother,  a  true  copy  of  Frochard  in  "The  Two  Orphans,"  and 
a  couple  of  brawny,  lounging  lads  with  sleeves  rolled  back  over  muscle- 
knotted  arms. 

The  storm  in  the  meantime  had  risen  to  the  dignity  of  a  tornado, 
shaking  the  house  till  the  windows  and  doors  rattled  like  the  teeth  of 
a  shivering  tramp.  It  was  a  curious  tableau  we  formed.  The  red- 
shirtcd  father  forming  with  the  formidable  looking  mother  and  the 
iinything  but  mild-mannered  boys  a  semi-circle  of  menacing  back- 
ground, while  the  girl  held  the  flaring  candle  aloft,  displaying  as  she 
did  so  an  arm  of  faultless  shape. 

At  last  I  produced  the  letter  I  had  obtained  from  an  old  friend  of 
the  distillers'.  lb  stated  that  our  visit  was  strictly  an  honorable  one, 
that  we  were  merely  after  the  picturesque,  and  that  he  might  with  the 
utmost  safety  allov/  us  to  inspect  the  secrets  of  his  "stilL" 

When  the  bear  hnd  read  this  through  and  passed  it  to  his  wife,  he 
growled  out  a  welcome,  and  shook  us  both  by  the  hand,  saying ; 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


53 


"That's  all  right.  I  didn't  know  at  first  but  what  it  was  the  gov- 
ernment itself  making  so  late  a  call.  "We  were  just  getting  to  work 
when  jou  came.  But  what  do  you  say  to  a  little  dishonest  whiskey 
first?" 

"We  nodded  concurrence  iu  the  idea,  and  a  stone  bottle  withglas.^cs 
was  produced.  The  pretty  daughter  waited  upon  us,  all  smiles  and 
affability  now.  After  the  drink  we  all  went  into  the  distillery.  Being 
able  to  drink  whiskey  is  one  thing,  and  understanding  how  it  is  made 
is  another.  I  am  quite  sure  my  readers  do  not  desire  any  scientific 
dissertation  on  the  subject  in  this  sketch. 

The  ''still"  is  copper  or  brass,  and  connects  with  the  worm,  which 
is  attached  to  some  other  mysterious  contrivance.  It  was  all  there  to 
be  seen,  and  after  they  had  fixed  the  "mash"  and  attended  to  a  few  de- 
tails about  valves  and  stop-cocks,  the  apartment  was  left  in  charge  of 
one  of  the  men,  and  we  returned  to  the  front  room  to  eat  some  sausages 
which  Frochard  had  been  cooking  and  upon  which  she  staked  her 
reputation.  I  liked  the  sausages  very  well ;  they  seemed  to  suit  the 
occasion,  to  fall  in  with  the  idea  of  smuggling,  and  all  that.  The 
"Pirates  of  Penzance  "  were  nowhere  in  wickedness  to  us  then. 

"  Mina,  tell  the  gentlemen  how  you  threw  the  ganger  and  saved 
the  'stiir  that  night." 

"  Tou  know  I  never  tell  that  story,"  said  the  handsome  woman^ 
with  a  bit  of  red  burning  through  the  brown  of  her  cheek,  ^'.ind  you 
shouldn't  ask  me." 

"Then  I'll  tell  it,"  said  a  good-looking  young  man  in  the  group,  as 
he  knocked  the  ashes  from  his  pipe,"  for  I  was  the  ganger,  and  she 
God  willing,  is  soon  to  be  the  ganger's  wife."  This  gentleman  had 
made  his  appearance  with  the  sausages. 

Mina  made  an  effort  to  escape,  but  her  mother  barred  the  way. 
So  she  went  behind  the  bar  and  a  German  newspaper. 

"  It  was  about  a  year  ago,"  the  young  man  began.  "I  vas  in  the 
employ  of  the  government  simply  as  a  ganger,  at  so  much  a  day,  but 
was  sometimes  detailed  on  special  duty  like  hunting  out  illicit  stills. 
1  broke  two  up  in  East  New  York  and  then  heard  of  this  one.  Not  be- 
ing sure  of  my  game  I  thought  I  would  prospect  first.  I  could  at  least 
destroy  the  apparatus,  if  any  were  discovered,  and  get  the  authority 
afterwards." 

"It  happened  that  I  came  in  here  when  Mina  wa&  all  alone.  The 


54 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


old  gentleman,  his  wife,  and  the  boys,  suspecting  nothing,  had  gone  to 
a  dance  over  in  Guttenberg." 

"Nein !  nein !  '*  came  from  the  old  lady,  "  eet  vos  a  funeral." 

"  Well,  they  were  away,  having  some  kind  of  a  time,  and  the  girl 
was  alone.  This  still  had  just  been  put  in,  and  represented  the  small 
fortune  of  the  family.     I  did  not  know  that  then." 

"  She  came  to  meet  me  and  asked  me  what  I  wanted." 

"  What  have  you  got  ?  "  I  replied. 

"  Beer — weiss  beer — mineral  water." 

"No  whiskey?" 

"No." 

"  None  in  that  room  there  ?  "  and  I  st  rted  up  to  go  into  the  stilL 
She  barred  the  way  quick  as  lightning,  and  I  noticed  then  that  she 
was  dressed  as  a  man,  with  a  pair  of  blue  overalls  stuffed  into  heavy 
boots.  A  long  apron  had  concealed  that  fact  before.  She  untied  it 
and  threw  it  away. 

"  My  suspicions  were  confirmed  at  once,  and  I  resolved  to  go  in. 
Taking  out  my  match  safe  I  struck  a  licjht  and  advanced  to  the  door, 
warning  her  away,  telling  her  it  was  foolish  for  a  woman  to  oppose 
me ;  that  I  was  an  agent  of  the  government  and  was  in  the  legitimate 
discharge  of  my  duties.  My  duty  to-night  was  to  destroy  the  still 
and  worm. 

"  All  the  answer  she  made  was  to  blow  the  match  out  and  close 
with  me.  When  I  found  that  I  had  to  use  foroe  I  fouud  I  couldn't. 
She  had  me  in  a  vice-like  embrace.  Of  course  I  did  not  attempt  any 
blows,  and  I  doubt  if  they  would  have  been  very  dangerous  ones  had 
I  been  ruffian  enough  to  resort  to  such  warfar^^.  It  became  a  fair 
wrestliiig  match,  and,  although  I  was  something  of  an  athlete,  I  use 
no  exaggeration  when  I  tell  you  that  by  the  use  of  some  mysterious 
twist  or  lock  known  to  her  I  was  thrown  clear  over  her  head  and  land- 
ed partially  on  my  own,  remaining  stunned  upon  the  sanded  floor  for 
some  time.  When  I  came  to,  she  was  bathing  my  head  with  all  the 
tenderness  of  an  angel. 

"  Id  is  needless  to  state  that  I  did  not  break  the  still  up  that  n'ght. 
I  made  a  report,  freeing  them  from  suspicion,  but  stated  that  I  would 
keep  my  eye  upon  the  family." 

"  And  in  order  to  do  it  all  right,"  said  the  old  man,  "he's  goin' 
to  join  dot  sam9  family.    Ain'd  it  so,  Mina?  " 


I 

i 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


55 


But  no  response ;  only  a  rustle  from  the  German  newspaper. 
"Your  introduction  was  certainly  very  classic/*  I  remarked  to  the 
young  ganger,  as  I  shook  his  hand  on  leaving. 

"How  BO?" 

"It  was  Gr»co-Boman  style." 

He  laughed  and  disappeared  in  the  saloon. 

My  artistic  companion  was  glum,  and  I  tried  to  cheer  him  upT 
You  see  another  ideal  had  been  smashed.    Finally  he  grunted  out : 
"  I  say,  what  throws  of  agony  those  lovers  had." 
"  Yon  are  right ;  when  are  they  to  be  married?" 
**Itt  the  fall,  of  course." 


CHAPTER  YIIL 

PETTY  FRAUDS  OF  NZW  YORK. 

The  small  swindlers  of  a  great  city  form  an  Lrmy,  and  those  of 
New  York  constitute  a  very  formidable  one,  indeed.  According  to  a 
local  detective  of  a  statistical  turn  there  are  nearly,  if  not  quite,  10,000 
people  in  the  metropolis  who  depend  entirely  on  their  skill  in  the  art 
of  **beatiiig"  for  a  living.  Of  this  great  body  of  enemies  of  the  public 
purse  more  than  half  devote  themselves  to  the  petty  swindles  with 
whose  existence  the  average  citizen  is  generally  familiar  enough,  fre- 
quently  to  his  sorrow.  These  parasites  on  the  public,  who  scorn  to 
toil,  waste  more  energy  and  mental  effort  in  avoiding  to  do  so  than 
any  of  their  victims  do  in  earning  honestly  the  spoil  they  extract  from 
them. 

"  It  is  for  all  the  world  like  gambling,"  said  the  detective  above 
alluded  to,  to  the  writer.  "Any  one  of  them  could  make  a  better  living 
on  the  square,  but  they  couldn't  have  the  fun  skinning  people  out  of  it, 
and  the  excitement  of  being  in  constant  danger  of  discovery.  That  is 
the  true  secret  of  a  professional  beat's  existence.  Then,  again,  the 
knowledge  that  he  is  smarter  than  the  majority  of  men  flatters  him. 
I  have  seen  one  of  them  actually  hug  himself  for  hours  over  ten  cents 
he  had  ^bilked'  some  'flat'  out  of,  simply  because  the  'flat'  had  been 
iaspicions,  and  had  to  be  manipulated  skillfully  before  he  gave  up." 


66 


MYSTERIES   OF  KEW  YORK. 


The  various  forms  which  the  petty  swindles  of  the  metropolis  as- 
sume present  an  interesting  subject  for  study.  There,  for  instance,  is 
the  so-called  furniture  swindle.  Not  long  ago  an  indignant  lady  ap- 
peared at  a  prominent  furniture  warehouse  and  demanded  to  know 
why  a  certain  bed-room  set,  which  she  had  selected  and  paid  for  two 
days  before,  had  not  been  sent  to  her  house.  She  produced  a  receipt, 
written  on  bla  .ik  paper  and  signed  with  the  scrawling  7jaitials  salesmen 
in  large  establishments  usually  affect.  The  sum  i'eceipted  for  was 
only  about  two-thirds  of  what  the  furniture  in  question  was  really  held 
ai  She  had  entered  the  establishment,  and  been  greeted  by  a  polite 
gentleman  just  inside  of  the  door.  The  stranger  had  accompanied 
her  around,  pointing  out  desirable  bargains  and  naming  such  low 
prices  that  she  had  felt  sorry  that  she  had  not  money  enough  to  buy  the 
entire  store  out.  She  finally  pitched  on  one  set  and  paid  for  it  The 
polite  stranger  scrawled  her  a  receipt,  took  her  address  and  saw  her 
to  a  car.  After  waiting  for  her  purchase  to  be  sent  to  her  until  she 
got  tired,  she  set  out  to  make  inquiries  about  it. 

The  salesmen  of  the  establishment  were  passed  in  review  before 
her,  but  she  nad  failed  to  identify  any  of  them  as  her  particular  one. 
It  then  becam'^  evident  that  she  had  been  the  victim  of  a  clever  out- 
side swindler,  and  very  little  inquiry  demonstrated  that  she  was  not 
alone  in  her  misfortune.  The  same  ingenious  knave  had  made  his  ap- 
pearance at  at  least  five  other  establishments,  with  similar  results.  H» 
must  have  been  conversant  with  the  business,  for  in  all  cases  he  selected 
warehouses  where  a  number  of  salesmen  are  employed,  and  where  th^ 
appearance  of  a  stranger  among  them  would  not  arouse  suspicion,  as  he 
would  be  supposed  to  be  a  new  clerk. 

"It  is  really  an  old  trick  revived,"  said  one  of  the  furniture  men^^ 
"and  years  ago  was  played  frequently  and  with  great  success.  Before 
the  war  furniture  stores  and  cabinet  ware-rooms  used  to  be  left  open  to 
the  public,  and  people  came  in  and  went  unattended.  K  they  wanted 
to  buy  anything  they  had  to  call  for  a  salesman  by  ringing  one  of 
the  hand-bells  scattered  about.  The  swindlers  found  it  easy  to  work 
under  those  circumstances,  and  they  went  at  it  with  such  boldness  that 
the  present  system  of  employing  many  salesmen  and  keeping  them  con- 
stantly on  the  watch  had  to  be  introduced-  Now  the  game  can  never 
be  played  twice  in  the  same  place." 

Another  old  swindle   which  is  being  revived,  with  mnoh  of  thft 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


ancient  success,  is  the  mock  auction.  "When  tlie  newspapers  and  the 
law  combined  some  years  ago  to  stamp  mock  auctionr^  out,  they  were 
one  of  the  most  lucrative  forms  which  the  swindlers  of  the  city  as- 
sumed. A  mock  auctioneer  was  a  sort  of  pirate  chief,  with  a  crew 
devoted  to  him,  and  the  public  to  forey  on.  His  craft  generally  sailed 
under  some  such  seductive  name  as  "  The  Original  Oregon  Cheap 
Jack,"  "Grandfather  Whitehead's  Cabinet"  and  the  like.  One  in  Chat- 
han  square  bore  the  appropriate  title  of  *'The  Golden  Fleece,"  the 
public  supplying  the  lambs.  In  those  old  days  mock  auctions  were 
far  from  being  petty  swindles. 

But  at  present  they  are,  though  they  are  out-growing  that  humble 
condition  fast.  A  year  or  so  ago  one  was  opened  in  Chatham  street, 
near  Worth.  It  was  a  ^ingy  little  shop,  haunted  by  ill-looking  men,, 
clad  in  the  height  of  Five  Points'  elegance,  over  whom  a  one-eyed  Jew 
presided  as  auctioneer.  The  window  presented  a  tempting  array  of 
watches  and  jewelry  of  averyfair  order,  picked  up  at  pawnbrokers'  sales. 

A  flag  over  the  door  announced  that  a  "  magnificent  bankrupt 
stock  of  watches,  jewelry  and  silverware  "  was  to  be  disposed  of  by 
peremptory  sale  to-day.  To-day  means  every  day,  for  the  flag  flapped 
there  till  it  rotted  from  its  stafll 

The  business  done  at  this  place  was  at  times  quite  lively.  When 
one  of  the  scouts  announced  the  approach  of  an  eligible  victim,  in  the 
person  of  some  green  Jerseyman  or  clam  magnate  from  the  Sound,  the 
one-eyed  auctioneer  would  start  off  at  a  gallop,  ripping  out  a  wild 
shriek  to  arrest  the  attention  of  the  victim  as  he  passed  the  store. 
The  display  in  the  window  and  the  announcement  on  the  flag  would 
lure  him  in,  and  he  was  either  a  very  fortunate  or  a  very  wise  man 
if  he  left  the  place  as  rich  as  he  entered  it. 

Beally  good  watches  and  jewelry  would  be  put  up  for  sale,  bid 
for,  disposed  of  at  reasonable  prices,  and  deltly  exchanged  for  other* 
which  would  have  been  dear  at  the  price  of  old  brass. 

Now  there  are  no  end  of  mock  auction  rooms  on  the  east  and  west 
sides ;  in  all  of  them  the  nefarious  business  is  carried  on  in  the  same 
lawless  style  that  induced  their  suppression  ten  years  ago.  There  are 
the  same  suspicious-looking  bogus  bidders,  the  same  genteel  loungers 
who  raise  a  bid  now  and  then,  and  the  same  voluble  auctioneer,  gorged 
with  cheap  witticisms  and  smutty  jokes,  which  he  discharges  as  the 
occasion  seems  propitious. 


58 


MYSTEIilES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


The  business  has  not  yet  assumed  the  alarming  proportions  it 
once  attained  to,  but  it  is  growing,  and  cannot  fail  soon  to  attract 
the  attention  of  the  police,  now  that  their  notice  is  directed  to  ii 

Other  forms  of  mock  auctions  are  those  of  pictures,  pianos,  furni- 
ture and  cigars.  Mock  auctions  of  pictures  are  always  held  in  stores 
which  happen  to  be  temporarily  vacant,  and  which  are  rented  for  the 
brief  period  the  swindler  requires  for  his  work.  As  soon  as  he  sells 
his  stock  out  he  decamps,  to  avoid  the  inevitable  meeting  with  some 
duped  customer. 

In  no  case  is  a  picture  offered  for  sale  at  one  of  these  auctions 
worth  the  canvas,  or  rather  oil-cloth,  it  is  painted  on,  for  the  majority 
of  them  are  smeared  on  the  cheapest  sort  of  carriage  covering.  They 
are  used  to  sell  the  frames,  which  are  manufactured  in  factories  in  large 
quantities,  gilded  with  Dutch  metal,  by  contract,  and  sold  in  a  hurry, 
as  a  few  rainy  days  in  a  store-room  turn  their  golden  glory  to  verdigris. 
Cappers  or  bogus  bidders  are  used  in  this  as  in  every  form  of  mock 
auction,  and  the  vilest  daubs,  in  the  most  worthless  frames,  sometimes 
bring  as  much  as  $200  and  even  $300  by  judicious  and  cunning  run- 
ning up. 

In  the  piano  and  furniture  auctions  good  dummy  or  sample  arti- 
cles are  exhibited,  and  comparatively  valueless  ones  of  similar  appear- 
ance foisted  upon  the  purchaser  in  their  place.  There  are  firms  here 
who  make  a  business  of  manufacturing  such  articles.  Piano  auctions 
are  usually  held  in  temporarily  untenanted  warerooms  which  have  been 
used  by  reputable  dealers  in  new  and  second-hand  pianos.  Furniture 
sales  are  conducted  in  houses  leased  for  the  purpose. 

Cigar  auctions  are  held  in  all  sorts  of  queer  corners  of  the  city, 
wherever  the  auctioneer  can  get  hold  of  a  place  to  operate  in.  The 
weeds  they  dispose  of  would  be  rejected  by  a  Chinese  vender  with  a 
corner  cigar  stand  in  Baxter  street.  Many  of  them  are  actually  made 
of  the  Manilla  paper  used  for  wrapping  purposes  in  cheap  groceries. 
The  paper  is  stained  brown  and  run  through  a  machine,  which  imparts 
to  it  the  veining  of  real  tobacco  leaf,  and  the  filling  is  of  chopped  stems 
and  discarded  cuttings,  which  even  the  lowest  tenement-house  cigar- 
makers  can  find  no  use  for. 

One  of  the  most  flagrant  of  the  minor  swindles  of  the  metropolis  is 
that  which  fishes  for  its  victims  with  the  seductive  bait  of  a  "business 
opportunity."    The  extent  to  which  it  is  carried,  and  the  success  which 


MT3TJERIES   OF  NEW  YORK.  G9 

attends  it,  ar©  almost  incredible.  It  usually  employs  two  people.  One 
is  a  man  who  has  an  office  in  a  reputable  neighborhood,  and  the  other 
a  plausible  "beat"  The  first  furnishes  the  capital  for  the  advertise- 
ments and  the  theatre  of  operations,  and  also  endorses  the  respecta- 
bility of  his  associate.  This  worthy  usually  has  a  patent  to  develope, 
which  requires  a  little  money  to  start ;  a  dramatic  company  to  put  on 
the  road  for  an  out  of  town  tour,  or  some  small  maniif'acturing  business 
to  establish.  He  only  requires  a  couple  of  hundred  dollars  for  his 
purpose,  and  his  dupe  is  to  be  the  treasurer  or  cashier  of  the  conceriL 
If  the  latter  agrees,  the  drain  on  his  purse  is  begun  at  once.  There 
are  bills  to  be  paid,  aixi  purchases  to  be  made,  all  of  which  are  con- 
ducted in  due  form.  The  victim  is  soon  tired  out  and  his  purse  ex- 
hausted, and  the  swindler  has  the  one  excuse,  "Well,  your  capital 
wasn't  big  enough.  If  you  could  pay  in  a  couple  of  hundred  more  now 
we'd  be  all  right."  There  is  no  redress.  The  plundered  man  has  paid 
xio  money  directly  to  his  plunderer,  though  the  latter  has  received  his 
anare  of  every  dollar. 

People  who  advertise  pawn  tickets  for  sale  are  generally  frauds^ 
The  tickets  are  in  many  cases  supplied  by  pawn-brokers  to  any  on^ 
who  may  apply  for  them  with  sufficient  interest  to  enjoy  their  conA 
dence.  They  are  all  for  such  redeemed  pledges  as  would  not  pay  the 
expense  of  sale.  The  advertiser  sells  the  tickets  for  a  mere  song.  The 
pxrrchaser,  if  he  is  suspicious,  may  not  be  willing  to  buy  the  ticket 
without  seeing  the  article  it  represents.  In  that  case  he  is  taken  to  the 
pawnbroker,  to  whom  he  pays  twenty-five  cents  for  the  privilege  of  ex- 
amination. This  examination  invariably  leads  to  rejection.  In  that 
case  the  ticket-swindler  gets  half  of  the  search  money. 

Women  are  the  chief  practicers  of  this  swindle,  and  it  is  so  ex- 
tensive a  one  to-day  that  there  are  certain  pawnshops  iu  this  city  which 
have  their  regular  tools  and  do  more  business  with  bogus  tickets  than 
in  the  real  traffic  for  which  they  are  licensed.  Eeally  honest  people 
who  desire  to  sell  pawn  tickets  can  always  find  purchasers  for  them  in 
the  proprietors  of  the  many  "old  curiosity  shops"  scattered  all  over 
the  city.  These  speculators  make  a  business  of  redeeming  useful 
articles  from  pawn  and  selling  them  at  a  moderate  profit  on  their 
outlay. 

Ther«  ii  a  claaw  of  female  swindlers  who  advertise  as  housekoepera 
Tb«»e  are  almost  alwayt  of  th«  loweit  order  of  confidence  women. 


60 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YOBK. 


They  Lave  an  associate  of  tlie  other  sex,  and  occupy  furnished  rooms 
of  Y/hich  their  tenancy  is  a  fleeting  one.  If  their  advertisement  secures 
an  answer  they  induce  the  respondent  to  call,  and  engage  him  in  a  con- 
versation, in  the  middle  of  which  the  male  associate  enters.  The 
woman  at  once  accuses  her  caller  of  improprieties,  her  husband  (?)  re- 
sents them,  and  the  dupe  is  glad  to  pay  for  his  escape,  unless  he  hap- 
pens to  know  enough  of  life  to  be  aware  that  his  swindlers  dare  not 
tempt  publicity  and  are  only  trying  to  bluif  him.  Often  a  case  of  this 
style  of  blackmail  comes  before  our  courts  in  the  course  of  a  year,  but 
victims  continue  to  make  it  profitable  for  this  style  of  fraud  to  pay  the 
papers  for  advertising  them. 

Matrimonial  advertisements,  on  the  part  of  both  male  and  female,, 
are  usually  inserted  for  the  purpose  of  inducing  a  correspondence^ 
which  the  advertiser  may  utilize  for  the  purpose  of  extorting  black- 
mail. 

The  begging-letter  fraud  has  come  to  be  a  peculiar  figure  among 
our  local  petty  swindlers.  He,  or  she,  is  of  English  origin,  where  that 
style  of  swindler  has  flourished  for  more  than  a  century,  in  spite  of  the 
vigorous  pens  of  Fielding  and  Dickens,  both  of  which  great  authors 
loved  to  lay  bare  their  shameless  fraudulency,  and  the  merciless  ad- 
ministration of  the  laws  against  mendicancy.  There  is  as  regularly 
organized  a  body  of  begging-letter  writers  in  this  city  as  there  is  in 
London.  The  members  comprise  both  sexes,  and  are  generally  people 
of  more  than  average  education  and  intelligence.  Their  assurance  not 
only  borders  but  actually  overreaches  on  the  incredible.  They  write 
to  everybody  whom  they  think  likely  to  assist  them,  or  who  has,  in 
fact,  any  money  at  all,  without  the  slightest  excuse  or  claim  upon  their 
charity.  The  late  Commodore  Yanderbilt  was  flooded  with  le  'ters  from 
them.  His  son's  daily  correspondence  always  contained  similar  com- 
munications. In  the  same  way  all  our  leading  merchants,  bankers,  and 
rich  men  generally,  are  applied  to  constantly  by  these  infamous  beg- 
gars ;  and  well-known  divines,  like  Dr.  Deems,  the  Eev.  Morgan  Dix, 
and  others,  are  constantly  plied  with  demands  for  charity  from  people 
whose  only  desire  it  is  to  live  without  working  for  it. 

The  professional  writers  of  begging  letters  are  undoubtedly  the 
most  depraved,  worthless  and  utterly  shameful  of  the  petty  swindlers 
who  prey  upon  the  city.  They  are  people  whose  education  and  natural 
gifts  render  it  easy  for  them  to  earn  honft^t  livings    Yet  they  pervert 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


61 


tliem  to  the  vilest  purposes.  Thej  are  rank  li^^pocrites,  using  the  most 
revolting  professions  of  piety  to  back  their  demands.  The  money  they 
extract  from  the  loose  purses  of  foolish  philanthropists  invariably  goes 
for  purposes  of  debauchery. 

As  a  local  paper  once  said: 
They  are  the  foulest  and  nastiest  of  all  the  foul  and  nasty  birds 
which  subsist,  buzzard-like,  on  the  offal  of  the  town.  Whining,  des- 
picable hounds,  compared  with  whom  a  sneak  thief  is  a  gentleman."  Yet 
these  sanctimonious  miscreants  find  dupes  who  possibly  weep  over  the 
woes  they  offer  as  excuses  for  their  appeals,  and  who  certainly  con- 
tribute constantly  to  their  support. 

As  a  class,  the  begging-letter  writers  live  well.  Some  years  ago, 
when  the  officials  of  St.  John's  Guild  began  to  investigate  the  case  of 
distres3  in  New  York,  they  found  many  of  these  wretches  inhabiting 
elegant  apartments,  enjoying  the  comforts  and  even  the  luxuries  of  life, 
purchased  with  money  wasted  on  them  by  sdly  charity,  while  scores  of 
the  deserving  poor  were  actually  dying,  like  murrained  sh3ep,  for  lack 
of  sufficient  food.  The  vigorous  press  denunciation  that  followed  the 
exposures  of  the  Guild  dealt  the  vile  business  quite  a  blow ;  but  it  soon 
recovered  itself,  and  is  now,  if  anything,  more  flourishing  than  ever. 

There  is  one  family,  consisting  of  a  mother  and  three  daughters 

5" 

who  occupy  an  up-town  flat,  dress  in  the  newest  fashion  iind  are 
familiar  to  theatre  and  concert-goers,  who  have  no  other  means  of  sub- 
sistence than  that  which  they  wheedle  out  oi  the  world  by  begging 
letters. 

Another  swindler  in  the  same  line  is  a  grt^asy  old  scoundrel  who 
frequents  a  well  known  chop-house  up-town,  and  can  frequently  be  seeu 
writ'ng  his  letters  there.  But  perhaps  the  rankest  rascal  of  all  is  a 
fellow  who  affects  the  society  of  actors,  and  can  be  seen  daily  in  Union 
Square,  spending  in  groggeries  there  the  charity  his  mendicant  talent 
had  procured  for  him. 

A  familiar  fraud  on  the  New  York  public  is  that  perpetrated  by  the 
bogus  smugglers.  This  typical  "beat"  is  in  all  cases  a  jovial  person- 
age in  a  blue  flannel  suit.  His  favorite  hunting-ground  is  in  down- 
town offices,  where  cunning  clerks  yearn  for  bargains.  He  blasts  his 
binnacle,  shivers  his  timbers  and  swears  other  strange  sea  oaths  after 
the  most  approved  style,  chews  tobacco  like  hay,  walks  with  a  rolling 
gait  and  is  always  redolent  of  rum.    But  somehow  or  other  he  neyer 


MYSTERIES    OF  NEW  YORK. 


looks,  to  the  initiated,  like  what  schoolboys  would  call  a  "  real  sailor." 
He  tells  in  a  mysterious  whisper  of  how  he  was  steward  or  "bo'son** 
or  some  other  rollicking  functionary  on  a  sea-going  craft,  and  how,  by 
virtue  of  his  position,  he  enjoys  enviable  opportunities  to  introduce 
rare  and  valuable  commodities  into  the  country.  These  commodities 
he  now  has  for  sale  at  advantageously  low  prices,  provided  his  patrons 
will  not  "split"  on  him.  They  usually  consist  of  India  shawls,  bolts 
of  the  best  English  broadcloth,  boxes  of  rare  cigars,  or  bottles  of  bay 
Tum,  and  command  a  ready  sale.  The  shawls  are  the  best  Paisley,  the 
cioth  always  turns  out  to  be  pure  shoddy,  the  cigars  clear  cabbage,  and 
the  bay  rum  a  bad  mixture. 

These  worthies  are  in  the  market  to-day,  and  thriving  as  of  yore. 
One  evening  the  writer  came  upon  a  party  of  them  in  a  beer  saloon  on 
Third  avenue,  near  Twenty-third  street,  which  he  learned  is  their  fa- 
Toiite  resort.  He  learned,  furthermore,  that  they  are  a  gregarious  lot, 
working  in  pleasant  amity,  and  meeting  every  night  to  discuss  the  swin- 
dles of  the  day.  They  were  at  latest  accounts  "working  a  lay"  as  they 
technically  express  it,  in  the  sale  of  Havana  cigarettes  and  foreign  cor- 
dials, both  of  which  have  their  origin  in  New  York.  Their  business  is 
a  highly  profitable  one.  The  wares  they  retail  cost  next  to  nothing, 
and  the  prices  they  obtain  for  them,  though  they  would  be  ridiculously 
low  if  the  articles  were  genuine  and  imported,  are  still  higher  than  the 
dupes  would  have  to  pay  for  excellent  domestic  ones  purchased  in  a 
regular  way.  But  they  pay  for  the  romance  of  buying  illegal  wares,  and 
eventually  discover  that  the  whistle  is  a  costly  one. 

A  singularly  ingenious  crop  of  very  small  swindles  has  been  de- 
veloped by  the  recent  hard  times.  There  are  men,  for  instance. 
are  in  the  habit  of  riding  next  to  the  Slawson  box  in  a  bobtail  cur,  and 
accommodatingly  putting  the  fares  of  other  passengers  in  for  them. 
There  is  not  one  of  the  bobtail  lines  which  does  not  preserve  at  least 
thousands  of  bad  nickels  as  souvenirs  of  this  game.  The  Broadway 
stage  lines  encountered  an  equally  novel  swindle  on  their  vehicles. 
They  sold  tickets,  by  the  dollar's  v/orth,  at  a  discount  of  nearly  fifty  per 
cent.  Men  purchased  packages  at  that  rate,  and  took  their  places  next 
the  fare  boxes  in  the  stages.  Whenever  a  passenger  permitted  it  they 
took  his  money  and  calmly  pouched  it,  dropping  on©  of  their  tickets 
into  the  box  instead.    One  who  was  arrested  acknowledged  to  %  g&in  of 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


63 


from  SI.  50  to  $4  a  day  by  this  means,  "according  to  his  luck,"  as  he  ex- 
pressed it. 

The  "bundle  beat "  is  another  character  of  city  crime.  His  method 
of  procedure  is  simplicity  itself.  He  is  always  decently  dressed,  with 
the  appearanc3  of  a  light  porter  at  a  dry-goods  store,  and  travels  with 
his  arm  full  of  bundles.  His  first  business  is  to  learn  the  personate  of 
any  quiet  street  where  private  dwellings  of  the  middle  class  abound. 
Then  he  rings  at  a  door  and  delivers  one  of  the  bundles,  with  the  in- 
formation that  Mr.  Blodger,  who  lives  there,  bought  such  and  such  ar- 
ticles, and  as  he  was  short  of  money  desired  them  to  be  sent  home  and 
paid  for  there.  If  Mr.JBlodger  happens  to  be  home  and  to  be  the  phys- 
ical equal  of  the  "bundle  beat,"  that  person  generally  has  a  rough 
time  of  it.  But  if  he  is  out,  as  the  swindler  usually  makes  sure  he  is, 
his  wife  or  landlady  accepts  the  trust  unhesitatingly  and  pays  the  re- 
quired sum,  which  is  always  kept  small  to  allay  suspicion.  The  bundle, 
of  course,  is  worthless. 

The  pocket-book  dropping  games,  and  the  various  other  confidence 
operations  by  which  verdant  visitors  to  the  city  are  constantly  gulled 
have  been  too  frequently  described  to  call  for  dissection  here.  There 
is  a  shameful  swindle  by  which  poor  men,  alone,  are  the  sufferers,  which 
makes  its  appearance  with  great  regularity.  This  is  the  registry  office 
swindle. 

The  originator  of  this  device  was  one  Henry  Acklin,  an  English- 
man, who  had  graduated  at  petty  swindling  in  the  London  police  courts. 
His  system  was  beautifully  simple,  and  is  that  followed  by  his  many 
imitators,  who  crop  out  from  time  to  time,  and  pursue  a  prosperous 
career  until  some  victim  invokes  the  law  for  their  suppression.  The 
operator  advertises  in  several  of  the  leading  daily  journals  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  registry  office  for  procuring  situations  for  clerks,  book  ■ 
keepers,  salesmen,  porter,  etc.,  and  announces  that  he  has  positions 
ready  for  a  number  of  each  clas3  On  applying  to  this  philanthropist, 
the  seeker  after  employment  finds  that  a  so-called  registry  fee  of  two 
dollars  is  demanded,  and  if  he  is  green  enough  pays  it,  when  his  name 
is  entered  with  mach  formality  upon  the  books.  It  is  hardly  necessary 
to  add  that  this  is  the  end  of  it,  so  far  as  any  situation  is  concerned. 
He  is  told  to  call  again,  and  may  keep  on  doiisg  so  for  half  a  genera- 
tion witho'it  getting  any  satisfaction — that  is,  if  the  office  doesn't  close 
before  tne  next  rent  day  comes  around;  which  is  likely  to  be  the  case. 


MYSTEBIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


Not  long  ago  the  discovery  was  made  tliat  a  man  in  Fulton  street 
liad  for  a  long  time  been  driving  a  thriving  trade  by  tlie  manufacture  of 
bogus  police,  fire  and  other  badges.  Among  his  stock  were  found  ex- 
cellent counterfeits  of  the  badges  provided  for  Inspectors  of  Weights 

  /> 

and  Measures.  Fraudulent  officials  of  this  class  haT<)  long  ranked 
among  the  petty  swindlers  of  New  York,  assisted  by  these  imitations 
of  the  insignia  worn  by  the  duly  authorized  incumbents  of  the  posi- 
tions. In  the  course  of  his  cruise  in  search  of  petty  swindles  the 
writer  encountered  a  curious  case  in  point. 

It  was  a  corner  grocery  in  Essex  street,  into  which  the  swindle 
seeker  had  stepped  to  lave  his  parched  throat  with  a  draught  of  the 
lager  retailed  in  the  back  room.  An  individual  in  a  dingy  and  baggy 
blue  flannel  suit,  under  whose  lappel  glittered  a  badge  as  big  as  a  sauce- 
pan lid,  occupied  the  front  of  the  counter.  An  excited  German  stood 
behind  it  He  was  in  that  state  of  frenzy  that  he  might  have  been 
taking  Zulu  as  well  as  any  other  known  language.  More  by  inference 
than  anything  else,  the  reporter  gleaned  the  knowledge  that  the  maa 
with  the  badge  was  an  inspector  of  weights  and  measures,  and  that  the 
German  was  very  angry  with  him  indeed. 

"  I  won't  pay  one  cent,"  he  vociferated ;  '*  I  paid  one  of  you  chaps 
two  dollars  yesterday,  I  tell  you." 

"  Then  you  was  stuck,"  said  the  inspector,  calmly  pickiijg  a  her- 
ring from  a  box  and  commenced  to  nibble  it. 

"I  was  stuck?" 

"  You  was  bilked,  beat,  fooled,  you  know." 
"How  is  that?" 

"Because  that  feller  yesterday  was  a  fraud." 
That  is  what  they  all  say.    He  told  me  that  the  fellow  before  him 
was  a  fraud." 

""Well,  maybe  he  was." 

"  Then  what  one  of  you  is  not  a  fraud  ?" 

"  I  ain't  one.    Can't  you  see  that  by  my  badge  ?" 

The  grocer  clasped  his  hands  and  rolled  his  eyes  appealingly 
«^  Ach  Gott  r  he  growled.    "  They  all  have  badges." 

Some  further  pailey  followed,  when  the  grocer  handed  the  man 
with  the  badge  a  couple  of  half  dollars  and  the  latter  retired  with 
graceful  haste.  The  host  had  hardly  drawn  the  reporter's  beer  when 
another  man  with  a  badge,  in  company  with  a  policeman,  entered. 


^  THE  ABDUCTOirs  VICTIM. 
iirow>  '  Bvsh  Honey,  or.  Tht  Mwaer  tt.  tkt  in 


I 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


S5 


"  I  say, '  he  asked,  "  wasn't  there  a  feller  here  a  minute  ago  who 
•aid  he  was  an  inspector?" 

The  grocer  gasped  an  affirmative. 

"  Did  you  notice  which  way  he  went  ?" 

"  That  way." 

"Then  weVe  got  him,  the  blaggard,'*  exclaimed  the  policeman 
He'll  stop  at  the  next  store,  and  I'll  have  him." 

And  he  shot  out,  while  his  companion  turned  to  the  grocer  and 
said,  jauntily : 

"Well,  you  might  as  well  trot  out  them  weights  now." 
"What?" 

"  Show  up  the  weights.    I  want  to  inspect  'em,  you  know." 

A  gleam  of  lurid  desperation  flashed  in  the  grocer's  eye.  "Oh! 
you  want  to  inspect  them,  do  you?"  he  said  hoarsely;  "veil,  begin 
right  ava3\" 

And  lie  hurled  a  three-pound  dish  at  the  inspector's  head.  The 
latter  dodged  it,  when  a  fusilade  of  small  weights  began  to  rattle  among 
the  soap  and  candle  boxes  behind  him.  When  the  writer  left  by  the 
back  door  the  grocer's  ammunition  was  exhausted,  the  genuine  inspec- 
tor had  fled,  and  a  file  of  boys  were  making  short  work  of  the  water- 
melons in  front  of  the  door. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  FIASH  MINISTER, 

Before  touching  the  subject  of  this  sketch  I  wish  the  reader  to 
make  no  mistake  by  imagining  that  I  intend  assailing  the  church  or 
religion  itself.  Therefore  all  genuine  religious  subjects  are  sacred  to 
me,  and  although  I  don't  go  to  church  as  often  as  I  should,  and  have 
not  yet  imitated  Mr.  Bonner  by  giving  $100,000  to  any  p;>rticular  one, 
still  I  admire  square,  solid  goodness,  and  I  will  be  the  last  to  attack  it 
or  its  exponents  by  voice  or  pen. 

But  I  do  hate,  in  some  instances,  and  envy  in  others,  what  I  have 
been  pleased  to  call  the  flash  minister. 

Undoubtedly  our  distinguished  friend  Talmage  is  the  best  living 
example  of  the  class.  Mr.  Talmage  is  coarse,  low  and  vulgar  in  his 
ideas;  there  is  a  broad  streak  of  the  buffoon  running  down  his  back. 


66 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK, 


and  all  his  clerical  education  dojs  not  liide  the  antics  of  a  clown;  and 
yet  this  theological  mountebank  has  80,000  people  crush  to  see  him  in 
London,  while  ministers  whose  shces  he  is  not  worthy  to  shine  are 
struggling  along  in  this  country,  starving  on  country  circuits  with  a 
wife  and  five  or  six  children  to  help  them  to  do  it. 

And  why?  because  one  is  the  unobtrusive,  silent  worker  in  the 
vineyard,  and  the  other  is  the  sensational  jack-in-the-box,  pounding 
the  velvet  plush  of  the  pulpit  with  the  Bible,  and  yelling,  "Here  we 
are  again." 

Any  one  who  takes  the  beautiful  stories  of  the  parables  of  the 
Scriptures,  and  attempts  to  improve  upon  them  by  turning  them  into 
familiar  language  that  would  disgrace  a  police  report,  and  who  speaks 
of  the  Almighty  and  the  angels  as  if  they  and  the  minister  had  lived, 
on  the  same  block ; — any  one  who  does  this  is  bound  to  attract  atten- 
tion, and  that  is  all  the  flash  minister  wants. 

Talmage  started  off  well  in  Philadelphia  by  going  over  a  dam  iii 
a  row  boat. 

"  He  went  over  that  dam  so  recklesslee 
That  now  he's  boss  howler  in  the  ministree. 

Eight  or  nine  months  in  the  year  the  flash  minister  wrestles  with 
his  lambs  and  then  he  is  voted  a  vacation  and  sent  to  Europe.  When 
I  think  about  this  delightful  yearly  trip,  I  sometimes  regret  that  I  did 
not  yield  to  the  importunities  of  an  ancient  aunt  of  mine  and  embrace 
the  church  while  a  young  man. 

I  am  sure  I  could  do  the  vacation  part  admirably,  and  could  even 
superintend  the  auction  sale  of  pews  with  dignity,  which  is  another 
portion  of  the  flash  minister's  duties. 

Sometimes  he  is  young,  handsome,  poetic  and  dreamy.  In  such 
instances  his  pathway  in  life  is  pleasant  or  otherwise  just  as  you 
choose  to  look  at  the  subject.  I  knew  one  of  the  sentimental  kind  in 
Philadelphia.  He  always  smelt  of  new  mown  hay  extract,  and  his  white 
cravats  were  dazzling.  I  remember  now  that  his  sermons  were  all 
about  harps,  and  humming  birds,  honeysuckles,  and  golden  gates  swing- 
ing open  upon  musical  hinges  to  let  us  all  in.  No  scaring  the  life  out 
of  you  in  that  church.  Well,  this  young  man,  who  is  the  lemonade 
type  of  the  flash  minister,  confided  in  me  once  that  he  was  truly 
wretched,  that  life  was  a  burden,  and  that  he  sometimes  thought  ok 
suicide. 


67 


I  recall  that  I  looked  him  steadily  in  the  eye  and  said  : 
"Which  one  of  the  lamb?>  is  it?    Her  name." 

But  I  was  wrong.  He  didn't  understand  me.  In  a  p>Jntrive  voice 
told  me  how  the  adoration  of  the  young  women  was  overpowering 
hinx.  It  was  within  two  days  of  Christmas  then  and  he  had  already 
received  200  paiis  of  worked  slippers,  37  pen-wipers  and  146  flowered 
silk  dressing  gowns.  What  could  he  do  ?  The  landlady  looked  uiDon 
the  whole  affair  with  suspicion  and  the  stuff  was  piling  up  so  about  the 
room  that  he  didn't  have  space  to  turn  about. 

I  reasoned  with  him,  but  to  no  purpose.  Nothing  could  shake  his 
melancholy.  I  distinctly  remember  that  I  suggested  getting  up  a  raffle 
in  a  neighboring  saloon,  but  he  did  not  look  upon  the  idea  with  favor. 
Finally,  he  gave  the  articles  away  to  the  poor  of  his  parish,  and  for  a 
year  after,  it  was  possible  to  see  some  rheumatic  truckman  leaning  back 
at  his  door  with  his  short,  black  pipe  in  his  mouth,  and  wearing  a  dress- 
ing-gown that  looked  as  if  it  had  been  made  for  the  Shah  of  Persia. 

This  young  man  had  no  Beecher  in  him  and  couldn't  stand  the 
pressure.  The  admiration  of  the  ladies  was  his  ruin.  He  left  the 
ministry,  took  to  drink,  and  when  last  I  heard  of  him  he  was  bil- 
liard marker  in  a  Pottstown  saloon. 

Now  Beecher  is  another  type  of  the  flash  minister,  despite  his 
great  intellectuality.  He  is  far  in  advance  of  his  day,  and  dares  not 
avow  from  his  pulpit  what  he  really  believes  to  be  so.  The  worked 
slippers  and  dressing-gowns  never  worried  him  ^hen  a  young  man 
and  don't  now.  He  has  probably  embraced  all  tne  opportunities  that 
have  presented  themselves.  Mr.  Beecher  has  done  a  great  deal  of 
Europe  in  his  summers,  but  he  prefers  the  White  Mountains  now, 
where  the  air  ameliorates  his  hay  fever. 

I  have  mentioned  illustrious  types,  but  the  woods  are  full  of 
flash  ministers,  who  have  no  more  business  in  the  pulpit  than  I  have 
in  a  French  convent.  You  will  not  find  them  in  the  country.  The 
city's  the  j»lace  to  air  bran  new  theological  ideas,  to  get  in  trouble 
with  the  deacons,  to  stand  trial  and  have  it  reported  in  the  news- 
papers, to  indulge  in  flirtation  dalliance  with  plump,  married  sisters, 
to  gradually  build  up  a  notoriety,  and  so  by  insensible  degrees  ar- 
rive at  the  stage  of  popularity  when  it  is  possible  to  make  the 
church  as  much  like  a  theatre  as  possible  and  put  a  brass-hom 
blower  in  the  gallery  to  lead  the  choir. 


4B 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


During  tlie  week  this  choir  sings  in  "  Billee  Taylor  "  at  wicked 
play-houses. 

I  expect  to  see  further  advances  made  by  the   subject  of  oul 
sketch.    Sermons  will  become  as  spicy  as  a  bottle  of  chow-chow,  and 
a  full  brass  band  will  supply  the  music,  all  hymns  being  set  to  ope^-- 
atic  music. 

Then,  as  he  prances  about  with  waving  arms  and  legs,  flying  hair 
and  strident  voice,  the  flash  minister  will  be  happy. 


CHAPTEK  X. 

THE   beggar's  EEVEL. 

The  last  up  train  on  the  Metropolitan  elevated  had  left  and  we 
iiad  to  foot  it. 

Going  up  South  Fifth  Avenue,  with  the  usual  eye  to  business,  we 
couldn't  have  missed  the  sign  if  we  had  tried. 

It  was  a  single  board,  split  through  the  middle  and  held  in  a  lop- 
sided drunken  fashion  over  a  beetle-browed  black  alley  between  two 
ramshackle  two-storied  frame  houses.  An  oil  lamp  in  a  cracked  reflec- 
tor lantern  flickered  in  the  gusty  night  above  it.  Its  blinky  flame 
looked  for  all  the  world  like  the  unsteady  ogle  of  some  loering  drunkard. 
The  lantern  itself,  perched  owlishly  on  a  couple  of  twisted  iron  legs, 
•was  one-sided,  as  if  the  oil  had  got  into  its  head  and  was  about  to  up- 
set it,  which,  if  lanterns  possessed  any  sense  of  smell  would  have  been 
no  wonder. 

To  carry  out  the  general  delirium  tremens  illusion  the  two  houses 
had  sunken  on  their  foundations  until  one  threatened  to  fall  upon  the 
other  and  send  it  reeling  into  the  yard  behind  the  fence  covered  with 
showbills  in  which  some  cats  were  either  serenading  or  trying  to  kill 
one  another. 

Not  being  an  authority  on  feline  eloquence  I  leave  it  to  the  reaaer, 
who  having  paid  his  money  may  take  his  choice  which  it  was. 

The  light  having  consented  to  stop  staggering  for  a  moment,  we 
ipead  on  the  board,  daubed  in  a  rusty,  black  gr-^und,  in  those  spidery 


THE  BLINi?   BEGGAli'S   REVEL— (P.  Obo 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


63 


i;rliite  letters  only  a  French  sign  painter  has  the  cheek  to  take  money 
for  pretending  to  paint, 

Aux  Avetcgtes,** 

It  certainly  was  a  good  place  for  a  blind  man ;  no  one  with  enongh 
eyesight  to  warn  him  would  be  likely  to  venture  into  it. 

No  one,  that  is,  but  an  old  rounder  and  your  artist. 

For  us  there  was  but  oiie  course,  which  is  indirectly  designated  by 
the  following  document  now  before  me  : 

"  Mr.  O.  Bounder,  in  act.  with  H.  Needle,  Tailor, 
To  1  Pair  Panialoons,       -       -       -  $10." 

There  was  a  name  at  the  bottom  of  the  document  but  the  boy  tore 
it  off  and  promised  to  bring  it  back  in  the  morning ;  from  the  fact  that 
he  didn't  I  infer  that  he  is  either  dead,  or  that  it  is  of  no  importance 
to  Mr.  Needle — it  certainly  isn't  to  me. 

"I  hope  you'ye  got  your  sketch-book,"  I  remarked  to  Sketchley,  as 
we  floundered  up  the  alley. 

"I  wish  I  had  a  cork  jacket,"  he  replied.  "It  would  be  more  use- 
ful just  at  present." 

Which  represents  the  case  in  a  nutshell  of  eloquence,  and  explains 
liow  Mr.  Needle  came  to  send  me  a  bill  for  a  pair  of  pantaloons. 

If  Jordan  is  a  marker  to  that  alley,  I  pity  the  pilgrims  who  have 
to  travel  it  without  boots,  and  don't  wonder  that  so  many  folks  prefer 
the  other  place. 

Coleridge  claimed  to  have  discovered  something  like  seventy-two 
different  stenches  in  the  city  of  Cologne.  His  olfactories  would  have 
got  tired  of  counting  up  on  that  passage  if  he  had  ever  tried  to  reduce 
Btink  to  a  mathematical  certainty  there. 

However,  we  got  through  it  and  came  out  in  a  square  court,  with 
l3uildings  all  around  it.  The  buildings  were  all  frame  ones,  tumble 
down,  with  crooked,  squinting  windows,  and  rickety  balconies,  nailed 
together  of  all  sorts  of  odds  and  ends  of  plank,  cropping  out  in  places 
-on  them  like  the  wens  on  a  beggar's  legs. 

There  was  a  tree  in  the  middle  of  the  court,  a  gaunt,  sapless, 
scrawny  affair,  whose  only  foliage  was  rags,  tin  cans  and  remnants  of 
old  wardrobe.  From  the  first  crotch  of  this  tree  a  beam  sprouted  out 
and  drove  its  other  end  into  the  front  of  the  rear  house,  as  if  it  had  a 
grudge  against  it  and  was  stabbing  it  to  the  heart    A  rusty  ring 


70 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK, 


creaked  in  a  corroded  bolt  in  this  beam,  and  a  frayed  rope  dangled, 
from  the  ring,  and  made  snaky  convulsions  as  the  night  wind  toyed. 
with  it. 

It  seemed  to  be  in  a  ghastly,  eager  way,  to  be  squirming  about  in  a 
vain  search  for  the  corpse  it  had  lost. 

The  moon,  a  bright,  full  moon,  was  right  behind  this  gibbet,  and. 
against  its  face,  an  object  perched  upon  the  beam,  made  a  hideous- 
silhouette.  It  was  a  long,  lean  cat,  which  had  jumped  up  at  the  nois& 
of  our  approach  and  stood  with  arched  back  and  a  tail  swollen  out  ta 
the  size  of  a  policeman's  club,  spitting  savagely  at  us. 

"  Look  out,"  cried  Sketchley. 

And  to  use  a  forcible  vulgarism  he  yanked  me  to  one  side. 

He  sketched  me  just  in  the  nick  of  time.  The  cat  went  sailing  by 
where  I  had  been,  landed  on  the  ground  with  a  thud,  and  disappeared 
ahead  of  a  train  of  diabolical  howls. 

"  Hey,  the  devil !  What  them  is  this  all  about  ?    Say  then !" 

It  is  a  hoarse  voice  that  says  this,  a  voice  like  the  grating  of  a 
rusty  prison  lock.  It  says  it  in  French,  and  it  seems  to  say  it  some- 
where from  the  region  of  the  gi'ound  we  stand  on. 

"Thousand  devils!    Are  you  then  deaf?" 

The  voice  is  getting  mad  now,  and  speaks  in  an  accent  that  might 
inspire  an  able-bodied  bull  with  envy.  A  dog  barks  too,  a  currish 
sharp  bark,  and  looking  down,  we  see  a  flary  light  at  the  bottom  of  a 
flight  of  dubious,  wooden  steps  as  we  stand  looking,  bu+  halts  a  couple 
of  feet  away,  barking  in  a  way  which  threatens  to  turn  him  inside  out, 
like  a  true  cur,  never  coming  near  enough  to  bite  or  to  be  kicked. 

By  this  time  we  have  make  the  situation  out. 

In  the  doorway  of  the  cellar  to  which  the  unreliable  staircase  leads^ 
the  thing  to  which  the  voice  belongs  holds  a  gliiteting  candle  with  a- 
brandy  bottle  stick  in  its  hand. 

The  thing  might  be  a  man,  growing  out  of  the  gro7irvL  for  he  ends 
about  where  the  tops  of  ordinary  j)Qople's  boots  come.  He  has  only 
one  eye,  a  deep,  inflamed  cavity  occupying  the  place  where  the  other 
ought  to  be.  The  hand  with  which  he  shades  the  candle  is  gnarled, 
and  Knotted  like  a  wierd  warped  cedar.  The  face  the  candle  lights  is 
that  of  a  baboon — only  dirtier  than  any  baboon  with  an  atom  of  respect 
for  its  race  ever  permits  its  face  to  become. 

I  explain,  in  my  fluent  Amity  street  French,  that  we  are  wayfarers- 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


in  search  of  fluid  refreshment,  and  as  we  both  have  relatives  in  the 
blind  asylum,  the  sign  at  the  door  lured  us  in  as  promising  appropriate 
hospitality. 

"Ask  them  if  they'll  treat,"  calls  a  clear,  woman's  voice,  in  English. 

We  are  inside  the  door  before  the  candle  cavalier,  whom  we  now 
see  to  be  an  excessively  inebriated  man  with  legs  which  end  at  the 
knees  in  leather  pads,  has  time  to  repeat  the  query. 

Promptness  in  emergency  is,  as  you  know,  a  marked  attribute  of 
your  artist  and  myself. 

Especially  when  the  emergency  has  what  I  may  paradoxically  term 
a  fluid  basis. 

I  knew  the  place  the  moment  I  set  foot  in  it.  It  was  the  famous, 
rendezvous  of  the  French  beggars  of  New  York,  the  tavern  of  "  Tha- 
Blind  Men." 

It  was  a  deep  cellar,  almost  square,  in  which  we  found  ourselves* 
From  the  low,  bare  beams  festoons  of  cobwebs  made  hammocks  for  the 
dust  and  soot  to  rest  in.  At  the  farther  end  from  a  waning  fire  of 
cinders,  showers  of  sparks  were  sucked  up  a  black,  gaping  chimney 
from  a  sort  of  gridiron  hearth. 

A  sooty  pot  swung  over  this  fire  at  the  end  of  a  crane.  An  old 
woman  stirred  it  with  a  copper  ladle,  while  half  a  dozen  almost  naked 
children  squatted  like  cats  in  the  warm  ashes.  Fierce  waves  of  heat 
swept  out  from  the  glowing  pile,  loaded,  as  sea  swells  are  with  wreck, 
with  odors  of  rancid  grease,  burning  fat,  garlic,  tainted  meat,  stale 
beer,  staler  fish,  ranker  tobacco  and  the  indescribable  reek  of  unwashed 
humanity. 

There  were  heaps  of  damp  rags  in  the  comerSj  which  steamed 
as  if  they  were  stewing  into  a  devil's  broth  in  their  own  juice. 

"Now,  then  ;  if  it's  treat,  talk  quick.    Mine's  gin." 

She  sat  on  the  arm  of  a  high,  red-painted,  old-fashioned  easy- 
chair.  One  arm  was  wound  around  the  neck  of  a  frightful,  sightless^ 
withered,  paralytic  old  man,  who  crouched  in  his  seat  like  one  of  the 
Aquarium  chimpanzees  in  its  straw,  wrapped  from  neck  to  heels  in  a 
filth-encrusted  army  overcoat,  gibbering  and  grimacing,  lapping  his 
pendulous,  alchol-swollen  lip,  with  his  loose  tongue.  His  face  and  hi^ 
palsied  hands  were  the  only  things  about  him  that  moved.  And  it 
seemed  a  fortunate  thing  for  humanity  that  they  were  all  of  him  that 
was  left  alive. 


f2  MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 

Yet  this  girl  of  eighteen,  fresh-faced,  rosj-cheeked,  bright  eyed, 
twined  her  round  arm  about  this  satyr's  throat  as  tenderly  as  if  he  had 
been  the  handsomest  of  sweethearts. 

And  seeing  us  staring  at  her  she  stooped  and  kissed  the  slavering 
lips  with  the  bravado  of  a  Bacchante. 

To  make  the  contrast  more  striking,  she  wore  a  train  dress  of  pink 
silk,  the  evident  relic  of  some  theatrical  wardrobe,  grease-splashed, 
mud-bedraggled  and  tattered,  but  fitting  her  fuH  form,  and  looking  by 
contrast  with  the  squalor  all  around  her  pure  as  her  fair  face 
looked  amid  the  debased  ones  which  were  turned  on  us  from  every 
side. 

"  It*s  the  old  fake's  doxy,"  hoarsely  whispered  a  burly  ruffian,  with 
a  wooden  log,  who  was  stretched  on  a  bench  just  inside  the  door,  fumi- 
gating himself  through  the  medium  of  a  black  pipe,  strong  enough  to 
draw  a  loaded  truck  witL 

— n  it,  man,  set  'em  up,  or  she'll  be  at  ye  like  the  born  devil 

she  is." 

"We  set  them  up. 

The  setting  up  was  performed  by  a  stalwart  person  of  Alsatian 
origin  with  a  blonde  beard  and  long  wavy  yellow  hair,  who  took  our 
money  first  and  made  sure  of  its  genuineness.  This  operation  led  us  to 
notice,  in  a  far  corner,  a  species  of  bar — a  counter  the  size  of  a  packing 
case,  with  a  top  covered  with  battered  zinc.  There  were  no  bottles 
visible  behind  it.  The  "  Blind  Men  "  evidently  were  not  trustworthy 
men,  teo. 

The  blonde  man  fetched  his  supply  from  some  receptacle  under- 
neath it,  over  which  a  fat  woman,  with  an  artificial  rose  in  her  shaggy 
hair  and  great  brass  hoop  ear-rings,  sat  guard  most  vigilantly. 

The  blonde  individual  handed  our  money  to  her  and  she  dropped 
it  into  the  cavity  between  her  breasts  as  if  she  was  posting  a  contribu- 
tion to  the  Irish  sufferers. 

Everybody  drank,  and  nobody  seemed  particular  what  they  drank 
out  of  as  long  as  it  held  plenty  and  wasn't  clean. 

There  were  tin  cans,  tumblers,  goblets,  beer  glasses,  china  cups, 
everything  in  short,  that  would  hold  liquid.  And  the  people  whc 
drank  outof  them  seemed  specially  created  to  find  use  for  the  battered, 
nicked  and  cracked  receptacles  themselves. 

It  was  such  a  beggar's  revel  as  Victor  Hugo  describes  in  the  open* 


MYSTERIES  v,^'  ITEW  YORK. 


79 


ing  of  "Notre  Dame  an  orgie  of  squalor,  mimic  misery  enjoying  tlie 
fruits  of  its  cunning  as  the  liog  wallows  in  its  congenial  slime. 

There  were  men  and  women  here,  or  rather  the  distortions  and 
remnants  of  men  and  women,  who  were  as  familiar  to  us  as  if  we  had 
known  them  all  our  lives.  There  was  the  blind  man,  with  the  venera- 
ble hair  and  beard,  who  fiddles  his  way  about,  led  by  his  faithful  dog. 
He  had  a  woman's  comb  jabbed  in  his  long,  silvery  locks  now,  and  lay 
back  with  his  hoary  head  against  the  swollen  breasts  of  a  red-faced 
woman  with  a  crutch  in  her  lap,  who  had  his  battered  hat  perched  on 
her  unkempt  hair.  They  were  drinkiag  what  passed  for  brandy  out 
of  the  same  chalice.  The  faithful  dog  was  earning  the  meed  of  his 
day's  toil  at  the  expense  of  a  cat  in  the  fireplace. 

But  to  describe  in  detail  this  congress  of  cripples  would  be  to  se» 
cure  for  the  readers  a  nightmare  they  have  certainly  not  deserved. 

It  haunts  me  yet. 

The  two  big  pine  tables,  set  together  and  lettered  with  the  scraps 
of  a  meal  which  reminded  me  of  one  of  of  the  obscene  faasts  of  the 
buzzards.  The  score  of  figures  round  it,  deformed  with  the  malignant 
deformity  of  devils,  drinking  the  liquor  whose  very  exhalations  made 
the  air  drunk  like  water.  The  jargon  of  hoarse,  weak,  shrill  and  broken 
voices,  mouthing  the  argot  of  the  Parisian  slums,  larded  here  and 
there  with  those  vigorous  English  oaths  the  foreigner  always  learns 
first.  The  greasy-chimneyed  oil  lamps,  swinging  from  the  roof  with 
iron  chains  ;  beyond,  in  the  red  light  of  the  fire,  the  bar,  with  the  fat 
woman  and  her  savings  bank  bust,  and  the  lean  children  squabbling 
like  imps  with  the  dogs. 

And  blazing  like  an  angel  newly-fallen  in  this  rout  of  de\dls,  the 
pink  dress,  caressing  her  palsied  lover,  burying  his  shameful,  shaking 
head  in  the  clod  of  her  wild,  copper-colored  hair. 

Who  was  she  ? 

That  is  just  what  I  have  been  trying  to  find  out  ever  since. 

Pierre  Carre  has  been  the  despot  of  this  colony  of  beggars  for  up- 
wards of  a  decade.  What  rum  has  left  of  him  in  the  tottering  para- 
lytic rules  them  stilL 

He  used  to  navigate  himself  about  the  streets  in  a  go-cart,  which 
he  propelled  by  a  lever  worked  with  his  hands.  But  when  his  blood 
turned  to  alcohol  and  his  strength  gave  out,  an  old  woman  pushed  him 


74 


MYSTERIES  OF  NEW  YORK, 


about.  The  crone  claimed  to  be  his  wife,  and  she  certainlj  came  as 
near  to  it  as  any  woman  can  without  owning  a  set  of  marriage  lines. 

One  night,  in  a  fit  of  drunken  fury,  Pierre  Carre  found  enough 
strength  left  in  his  withered  arms  to  strangle  her. 

The  idea  of  his  murdering  her,  however,  soemed  so  preposterous 
to  the  coroner's  jury  that  they  returned  a  verdict  of  accidental  doatht 
in  defiance  of  the  ten  livid  marks  on  the  dead  woman's  throat  and  of 
the  ten  deep  pits  bored  by  the  beggar  king's  black  nails. 

Then  Esmeralda  turned  up. 

She  came  into  "  The  Blind  Men  Tjne  night,  pushing  the  go-cart 
before  her  as  unconcernedly  as  if  she  had  been  at  that  work  all  her 
life.  She  was  ragged,  shivering  under  a  single  calico  dress  and  a  thin, 
tagged  shawL    But  she  was  all  the  prettier  for  it. 

"  She  was  a  daisy  in  them  days,"  exclaimed  the  gentleman  with 
the  wooden  leg  and  the  pipe,  who  is  an  English  *'codger  "  with  a  great 
coniempfc  for  the  *'  foreigners  "  with  whom  his  lot  is  temporarily  cast, 
•*But  the  gin's  commencing  to  fetch  her  now." 

It  always  does  fetch  them. 

And  Esmeralda  drinks  it  I'ke  soda  water  or  root  beer. 

This,  and  the  fact  that  she  is  Pierre  Carre's  daily  and  nightly 
companion,  is,  about  all  the  denizens  of  "  The  Blind  Men  "  hostelry 
faiow  of  her. 

Except  that  she  speaks  French  and  English  with  equal  fluency  and 
is  artistically  profane  in  both  languages. 

'  From  the  time  she  takes  the  old  man  up  in  her  arms  and  carries 
l)im  like  a  bundle  of  dirty  rags  or  a  sack  of  olTal  up  to  the  mysterious 
room  on  the  floor  above,  which  no  one  penetrates,  and  in  whose  fast- 
nesses the  mendicant  monarch  is  supposed  to  have  a  fortune  secreted, 
until  she  reappears  wheeling  him  into  the  cellar  in  his  day-car  of  state, 
she  speaks  to  no  one  except  to  those  from  whom  in  the  street  she 
craves  charity  for  her  poor  father. 

What  link  can  it  be  that  binds  this  girl  to  her  revolting  paramour? 
Can  it  be  traced  back  to  some  disappointment  which  overthrew  what 
Jittle  reason  the  woman's  unbridled  temper  had  left  her  and  sent  her 
to  the  gutter  on  a  high  tide  of  gin  ? 

For  she  has  the  temper  of  a  deviL 

Sometimc^s  she  flies  into  a  passion  even  with  her  helpless  lord,  and 
iwbaaigs  him  about  the  ears  like  a  ichoolboj. 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK. 


75 


But  as  a  rule  slie  finds  vent  for  her  temper  on  the  other  women 
and  on  Iho  children  and  dogs. 

And  as  a  majority  of  the  first  ara  cripples,  while  the  others  are  toa 
TT-eali  to  resist,  she  has  come  to  rule  the  rc  ^  ,  with  a  rod  of  muscle  and 
L>ad  language. 

Once  a  nobby  young  beggar,  an  aristocrat  with  one  leg  and  a  false 
blind  eye,  attempted  to  make  an  impression  on  her. 

Ho  attempte«l  to  make  his  impression  with  his  engaging  manners. 
She  made  hers  with  a  club. 

And,  holding  a  full  hand,  clubs  proved  to  be  trumps,  only  the 
young  man  spelled  it  with  an  h. 

There  is  a  belief  entertained  that  Esmeralda  is  Pierre  Carre's 
daughter,  but  it  has  no  foundation  whatever,  except  that  which  is 
given  it  by  the  prolific  imagination  of  the  people  who  have  made  a  fine 
art  of  romancing  for  the  benefit  of  the  charitably  disposed. 

The  clock,  without  a  minute  hand,  and  with  a  half-pound  weight 
for  a  pendulum,  was  trying  to  say  it  was  two  o'clock  when  your  artist 
and  myself  turned  to  leave. 

The  movement  was  the  signal  for  a  general  outbreak  and  a  score 
of  voices  called  to  us  for  charity. 

The  noise  seemed  to  aiouse  old  Pierre  Carre  from  his  palsied  leth- 
argy, and  he  mumbled  something  which  Esmeralda  seemed  to  find 
intelligible.  At  any  rate  she  fetched  the  table  a  bang  with  her  gin 
goblet  that  sent  the  glass  flying  in  splinters. 

"The  devil  take  you  all !'*  she  cried  in  French.  "Have  not  the 
gentlemen  done  enough  then  ?    Sit  down,  or  by  the  deviFs  belly — '* 

They  sat  down  without  asking  her  to  go  any  further  into  diabolica| 
anatomy. 

The  English  "  codger,*'  however,  stumped  ahead  of  ns  under  the 
pretext  of  opening  the  door,  and  tackled  us  outside  in  a  hoarse  whis- 
per for  an  alms. 

We  wouldn't  mind  giving  it  if  he  would  tell  us  something  about 
Esmeralda. 

He  would  if  he  could.  But  anathemise  his  sanguinary  optics  if 
he  knew  much.  "  All  as  I  does  know,  he  says,  "  is  that  a  coppen  ono9 
told  mo  she  used  to  walk  the  curbstone  up  in  Amity  street,  and  that  ths 
old  fake  got  struck  after  hep,  and  he  bein*  thought  to  be  well  fixed  sbe 
let  him  have  her." 


MYSTERIES   OF  NEW  YORK, 

.  i" 

He  was  standing  under  the  gibbet  wlien  lie  said  this,  and  it  seemed 
ft  pity  that  the  serpentine  rope  couldn't  reach  down  and  twine  itself 
about  his  filthy  throat  for  destroying  our  romance. 

But  it  didn't,  and  we  picked  our  way  out  through  the  alley,  leaving 
the  moon  to  take  a  last  peep  at  the  hostelry  of  "  The  Blind  Men  "  over 
the  fence,  and  listen  to  the  one  blind  man  with  long  hair  saw  the 
**  Devil's  Dance  "  out  of  his  cracked  fiddle  to  the  accompaniment  of 
trampling  feet. 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?  '*  I  asked  of  Sketchley. 

"Buttoning  up  my  pocket.  I*m  afraid  we  might  meet  a  beggar 
before  we  get  home." 

But  we  didn't. 

As  the  reader  has  seen,  he  has  better  things  to  do  after  midnight 
ftnd  knows  a  trick  worth  half  a  dozen  of  thai 


FOtIiY'S*QDEEflS. 


Women  whose  loves  have  Ruled  the  World. 


FRANKLIN   SQUARE,   NEW  YORK  CITY. 


Paris  by  Gas-light 


TLe      hik  of  iKe  G^^j^^l  Qilj 
m  iKe  World  Expo5ed. 


BY  AN  OLD  BOHEMIAN. 
F»ROFUSELY  ILLUSTRATED 


RICHARD     K.     KOX,  PURLISHKR, 

FRANKLIN    SQUARE,    NEW  YORK. 


Life  Scenes  and  Stirring  Incidents  in  tlie 
Great  Metropolis. 


A  MAGNIFICENT  PANORAMA  OF  NEW  YORK 

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